According to Criminal Procedure Act, documents which may be used to determine facts in proceedings shall be temporarily seized and deposited for safekeeping. Whoever is in the possession of such documents shall be bound to produce them upon the request of the State Attorney, the investigator or the police authorities. State authorities may refuse to produce their files and other documents if these constitute confidential information in accordance with a special law.
Legal entities may request that data related to their business be not disclosed. A decision on disclosing such data shall be made by the investigating judge or the court before which the hearing is conducted upon the reasoned motion of the State Attorney. If necessary, the authority conducting the proceedings shall, after the relevant verification, make a copy of the documents used for establishing facts, and return the original to the applicant. Files or documents which are temporarily sized because they may be used as evidence shall be listed. If this is not possible, they will be put in a separate cover and sealed.
The person from whom a file or document is temporarily seized may put his own seal on the cover. According to the Act on mutual legal assistance in criminal matters, articles, documents or monetary gain which have been temporarily seized to be presented as evidence, as well as records and decisions, shall be made available to a foreign judicial authority upon its request, after the completion of the mutual legal assistance proceedings in the Republic of Croatia.
The following are not subject to temporary confiscation:
1) files and other documents of state bodies, the publication of which would violate the obligation of confidentiality until the competent authority decides otherwise,
2) written communications from the defendant to the defense attorney, unless the defendant requests otherwise,
3) recordings and private diary found with persons with whom the defendant is married and cohabiting; certain relatives; adoptees and adoptive parents of the defendant, which were recorded or written by these persons, and contain recordings or records of facts about which these persons are exempted from the duty to testify,
4) records, excerpts from registers and similar documents found with the rooms with which the defendant is married and cohabiting; certain relatives; adoptive parents and adoptive parents of the defendant; of a notary public and a tax advisor, compiled on the facts that these persons learned from the defendant in the course of their profession,
5) records of facts compiled by journalists and editors in the means of public communication about the sources of information and data that they learned about in the performance of their profession and which were used when editing the means of public communication, and which are in their possession or in the editorial office where are employed.
The Criminal Procedure Act also prescribes exceptions to the ban on temporary confiscation of objects