ZAGREB, March 2, 2018 - Zagreb County Court on Friday again upheld the indictment against former prime minister Ivo Sanader and the former owner of the Dioki petrochemical company, Robert Ježić, for the sale of cheap electricity to Dioki.
The defence asked that the case be dismissed because one of the defendants, the late CEO of the state-owned HEP power company, Ivan Mravak, had admitted that Sanader had encouraged him to give Ježić's firm preferential treatment.
Sanader's lawyer Jadranka Sloković said that the same panel of judges made two opposing decisions. "The first time around they said that the indictment was based on Mravak's statement only, and now they say that the court will decide how it will use it in the course of the trial," Sloković said. She said that the defence would continue to insist that Mravak's statement could not be used as grounds for a guilty verdict.
Sanader was indicted in 2012 for encouraging Mravak to grant Ježić's company an 15 million kuna loan and sell it electricity below the market price. The trial was to have opened in the summer of 2014, but was delayed because both of Sanader's co-defendants had taken ill, and Mravak died in the meantime.
