October 12, 2022 - Former Prime Minister and President of the HDZ, Ivo Sanader, was acquitted of war profiteering in the Hypo scandal in a retrial on Wednesday, for which he was convicted twice in earlier proceedings.

As Poslovni writes, the verdict was announced by Zagreb County Court judge Saša Lui after the prosecution and defense presented their closing speeches last week. Sanader once again asserted that he was not responsible for war profiteering, stressing that he stands by the defenses he presented in earlier proceedings.

Disputed commission of HRK 3.6 million

Sanader was tried for the third time for the Hypo affair. He was convicted twice before, and the Constitutional and Supreme Courts overturned the verdicts.

Uskok's prosecutor, Marija Vučko, asserted in her closing speech that even in the repeated proceedings, it was proven that Sanader had committed the crimes for which he was accused.

Sanader's lawyer Čedo Prodanović pointed out, on the other hand, that there was no war profiteering in this case and that, despite the conclusions of the higher courts, Uskok did not deviate from its initial position.

The prosecution accused Sanader of receiving a commission of HRK 3.6 million from Hypo Bank as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs in late 1994 and early 1995 after Croatia was granted a loan to purchase embassy buildings.

This way, according to the prosecution's claims, in the difficult financial and economic situation caused by the war, Sanader achieved an illegal financial benefit that is disproportionate to the threatened fundamental values ​​of the state and social community, as well as state interests.

Sanader has been in prison since 2019

Sanader has been in prison since April 2019, when the Supreme Court increased his sentence for corruption in the Planinska case to six years in prison.

In mid-October 2021, the Supreme Court partially confirmed the verdict from the repeated proceedings in the Fimi Media case, according to which HDZ must pay HRK 3.5 million in fines for extracting money from state institutions and companies, while Sanader's sentence was reduced from eight to seven years in prison.

At the end of October 2021, the Supreme Court confirmed the first-instance verdict by which Sanader was sentenced to six years for accepting a bribe from the head of the Hungarian MOL, Zsolt Hernadi, while the unavailable Hernadi was sentenced to two years in prison.

In mid-November 2021, the Supreme Court confirmed the only acquittal against Sanader, by which he was acquitted together with entrepreneur Robert Ježić for selling cheap electricity to Ježić Dioki to the detriment of HEP.

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ZAGREB, 16 Oct, 2021 - President Zoran Milanović said on Saturday that he did not consider today's HDZ to be a criminal organisation due to the Supreme Court's ruling in the Fimi Media case, but he noted that PM Andrej Plenković's statement, in which he linked the ruling with Milanović's rhetoric, was "silly".

"I think that it is irresponsible to link the ruling, whereby the Supreme Court actually upheld a lower court's ruling, with my statements. The idea that my rhetoric had influence on the Supreme Court's decision is silly," he told reporters during a visit to Samobor, a town west of Zagreb, where he attended a ceremony marking the town's day.

The Supreme Court last Wednesday partly upheld the verdict following the retrial in the Fimi Media corruption case, under which the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) was fined HRK 3.5 million while the former PM and HDZ chief Ivo Sanader had his prison sentence cut from eight to seven years.

Sanader and his co-defendants were charged with siphoning around HRK 70 million (€9.3 million) from state-owned companies and institutions through the Fimi Media marketing agency into the HDZ's slush funds from 2004 to 2009.

Commenting on Plenković's statement of Friday, Milanović said that he had indeed criticised the Supreme Court but that Plenković had confused the cause with the consequence.

Plenković on Friday said, among other things, that he did not know if some judges worked under the pressure of Milanović's rhetoric.

"And then the Supreme Court does what? It takes revenge on the HDZ by listening to me, who had criticised it. I think such statements are for the Logic Olympiad," Milanović said.

He noted that he did not consider Plenković responsible for crime in the HDZ and did not claim that today's HDZ was a criminal organisation.

"You won't hear me say that the HDZ is a criminal organisation. Not all people there are clean today, but today's HDZ has that, too, in its past. Just as the SDP has in its past the fact that it is the successor to the Communist Party," he said, adding that those things should be left to the past and that new people were emerging and answering to voters.

He said that he had been the first in the country to raise the issue of criminal liability of legal entities.

"There was a law from 2003 which envisaged for the first time that kind of legal responsibility. I raised that issue in the parliament, I was not Prime Minister at the time, and, to my surprise, the Public State Attorney launched the procedure and the (Fimi Media) ruling is a result of that. So in a way, I am responsible for the ruling," he said.

Protesters should not rally outside office-holders' homes

Asked to comment on protests held outside the homes of members of the national coronavirus management team, Milanović said that protesters should not do that.

"They are free to disagree with what those people do, but to protest now, after a year and half? They could have done it earlier if they had objections, and they should especially not be doing it outside (COVID-19 response team's members') homes because that way they disturb their neighbours," Milanović said, calling on the protesters to end the protests.

Speaking about the prosecution of crimes committed in the 1991-95 Homeland War, Milanović said that the Croatian judiciary had done its best, notably with regard to the prosecution of members of the aggressor forces.

"Evidently some things are no longer possible due to the passage of time. I am sure the Croatian judiciary does not have an agenda to help the enemy. There are real limitations regarding time, place and facts. I am not satisfied, but on the other hand, a lot has been done so I can say that I am also satisfied," he said.

We have no relations with Belgrade and Serbia

As for people gone missing in the war, Milanović said that Belgrade was familiar with the destiny of close to 2,000 missing persons.

"We will insist on that, we won't let the matter rest just like that," he said, adding that Croatia currently has no relations with Belgrade.

"Relations with all the others are good or very good, they are not good only with Belgrade and those currently in power there," he said.

Milanović announced that he would attend this year's commemoration of the fall of the eastern city of Vukovar.

"This year is different, last year the way things were organised was wrong," he said.

He welcomed the government's decision to limit fuel prices but noted that it would cost.

"The government has the instruments, naturally all of that costs, and one should be aware that producers and distributors who have fixed costs will have to be compensated somehow," he said, estimating that prices of energy products should go down in a few months.

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ZAGREB, 11 June 2021- The open hearing in the Fimi Media corruption case before the Supreme Court ended on Friday with the defence and prosecution presenting their appeals against a non-final ruling handed down by Zagreb County Court, and the Supreme Court ruling is expected within the next month.

The defence attorneys representing Ivo Sanader, a former prime minister and one time leader of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), Jadranka Sloković and Čedo Prodanović, reiterated that in delivering its ruling Zagreb County Court did not take account of the Supreme Court's opinion from 2015 when the highest court in the country quashed the non-final verdict handed down in 2013, stating that Sanader was denied his right to cross-examination as his co-defendants refused to answer his questions.

In November 2020, Sanader was found guilty pending appeal and sentenced to eight years in prison for siphoning money from state-owned companies and institutions. Also convicted in a retrial before Zagreb County Court were former HDZ treasurer Mladen Barisic and accountant Branka Pavosevic while the party, in whose slush fund some of the siphoned money had allegedly ended up, was found "responsible."

Sanader waiting in jail for several cases to be resolved

One month after the non-final ruling in the Fimi Media case ,the Constitutional Court rejected a complaint by Sanader in the Planinska Street case, in which he has been convicted and is currently serving a six-year prison term. With that ruling by the highest court in the country, Sanader has exhausted all legal means to appeal against decisions before the national courts.

Sanader was convicted of taking a commission of HRK 17.5 million after the state bought a building in Planinska Street in Zagreb that was owned by former HDZ parliamentarian Stjepan Fiolić. Zagreb County Court delivered the conviction in 2017 and the Supreme Court upheld the ruling in April 2019.

In the meantime Sanader is waiting for a decision by the Supreme Court after he was sentenced to six years imprisonment for taking a bribe from the Hungarian energy group MOL. If the sentence is upheld, Sanader will have to pay back €5 million into the state budget.

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ZAGREB, November 13, 2020 - Former prime minister and former HDZ party leader Ivo Sanader was found guilty on Friday pending appeal and sentenced to eight years in prison for siphoning money from state-owned companies and institutions in the Fimi Media case.

Also convicted in a retrial before Zagreb County Court were former HDZ treasurer Mladen Barisic and accountant Branka Pavosevic while the party, into whose slush fund some of the siphoned money had allegedly ended up, was found "responsible".

Details of the case as well as the sentences of all the indictees will be known after the trial chamber reads out and explains the verdict.

Neither Sanader nor his co-defendants on Friday attended the reading of the verdict in the case in which they were charged with siphoning around HRK 70 million (€9.3 million) from state-owned companies and institutions through the Fimi Media marketing agency. The ten-year case has become a byword for political corruption in Croatia.

Sanader was not present because he is undergoing physical rehabilitation in a spa following surgery and due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The retrial in the case started in 2016, a year after the Supreme Court quashed a sentencing verdict handed down in 2013 by Judge Ivana Krsul.

While USKOK anti-corruption investigators believe that they have proven the responsibility of Sanader, his former party and his co-defendants for corruption also in the retrial, their defence claims there is no evidence of their guilt.

The HDZ's lawyers said the party should be held accountable for a misdemeanor, while Sanader's defence reiterated that the incrimination was based solely on the "contradictory, inconsistent and illogical" testimony of former HDZ treasurer Barisic.

Besides Sanader, Barisic, Pavosevic and the HDZ, also indicted in this case was former government and HDZ spokesman Ratko Macek. Another defendant, Fimi Media owner Nevenka Jurak, died during the retrial.

In the first trial, Sanader was sentenced to nine years and ordered to return over HRK 15 million in illegal gains, while the HDZ was ordered to return more than HRK 24 million and fined HRK 5 million.

In the first trial, Barisic, Pavosevic and Jurak were given milder prison sentences and ordered to return the money. Unlike then, in the retrial they pleaded not guilty. Macek and Sanader were the only ones denying the charges from the start. In the first trial, Macek was given a suspended sentence.

Sanader has been in prison since 2019, serving a sentence in the Planinska corruption case. In the meantime, he has been sentenced pending appeal for taking a bribe from the Hungarian energy group MOL and, in 2018, for taking a kickback from the Austrian Hypo bank. He has been acquitted pending appeal for the sale of electricity from the HEP provider at cheaper prices.