Crisis communication is one of the most demanding aspects of communication. When a crisis situation occurs, public relations experts face an immense challenge to overcome the situation as successfully as possible and to try to get out of it with minimal loss. The thesis primarily establishes in which way an effective crisis communication and public figure’s image management are implemented, or in other words, which tools are used and in what way. The research method was the analysis of content from articles published in media, which was used in order to establish the timeliness and strategy of crisis communication of key players who were in charge of ex-Prime Minister Ivo Sanader’s and Mayor of Zagreb Milan Bandić’s communication. The method was also used to concretely determine which communication tools were utilized from the moments when the arrests were made. The two periods analyzed in the research are those between 10th December 2010, when ex-Prime Minister Ivo Sanader’s parliamentary immunity was removed and the court procedure against him started, and 10th January 2011, and between 20th October 2014, when Mayor of Zagreb Milan Bandić got arrested, and 20th November 2014. The abovementioned research method – the content analysis – refers to the analysis of newspaper articles published in the three most relevant and widely read daily newspapers in Croatia – 24 sata, Jutarnji list and Večernji list. The total number of analyzed newspaper articles is 611, of which 312 are related to Ivo Sanader and 299 to Milan Bandić. The results of the research have shown that the communication of key players did not meet the standards of efficient crisis communication. Crucial findings of the research, obtained through analysis of media releases in the press, indicate that Ivo Sanader’s and Milan Bandić’s respective lawyers had the main role in the crisis communication. Their communication was not proactive; they gave statements only at journalists’ requests, after the hearings. An important item in the research was also the fact that at the time when the crises occurred, Ivo Sanader, as a regular Member of Parliament, did not have a spokesperson or a PR team behind him, while Milan Bandić as a mayor had a PR team working for him. By bringing the implementation of public relations into correlation with media releases, it was noticed that not utilizing public relation tools resulted in reliance on legislative bodies as main sources for the articles published in daily newspapers. The basis for the research is described in the theoretical part of the thesis.