Jakov Kitarović
| Jakov Kitarović | |
|---|---|
| First Gentleman of Croatia | |
|
Assumed office 19 February 2015 |
|
| President | Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović |
| Preceded by | Tatjana Josipović |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 4 October 1968 Rijeka, Yugoslavia (now Croatia) |
| Spouse(s) | Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović (1996–present) |
| Children | 2 |
| Alma mater |
University of Zagreb (Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing) University of Rijeka (Faculty of Maritime Studies) |
| Website | Government website |
Jakov Kitarović (born 4 October 1968) is the current First Gentleman of Croatia, serving since 19 February 2015. He is the husband of Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, the 4th President of Croatia, who was narrowly elected to office in the January 2015 presidential election, defeating the incumbent President Ivo Josipović. Jakov Kitarović thus succeeded Tatjana Josipović in the role of First Spouse and is the first male holder of the office, as well as the youngest to date, aged 46.
He was born in Rijeka in 1968 as the son of Ivo Kitarović, a professor at the Faculty of Maritime Sciences of the University of Rijeka.
Kitarović graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing of the University of Zagreb in 1998 and also has a degree in nautics from the Faculty of Maritime Sciences of the University of Rijeka.
Kitarović created controversy in 2010, when it was reported that he had been using an official car belonging to the Croatian embassy in Washington, D.C. for private purposes. Furthermore, it was revealed that a member of the embassy's security staff had followed and filmed Kitarović for days, with footage of his activities later appearing on YouTube, but later being removed. As a result of both these occurrences, Foreign minister Gordan Jandroković decided to launch an internal investigation, which furthermore uncovered that Kitarović's wife (later the 4th President of Croatia) Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović herself had, despite having an embassy-owned Cadillac DTS (with a driver available to her 24 hours a day), used another embassy car, a Toyota Sienna, for private purposes. In her defence to the accusations Grabar-Kitarović claimed that her diplomatic duties lasted for 24 hours a day and that it was thus not possible for her to separate her working life from her private life. She later paid for all expenses that occurred due to her husband's unauthorized using of the car, while the member of embassy's security staff who had filmed her family was laid off.
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Wikipedia