Croatia again asked Interpol to extend the Europe-wide arrest warrant for the CEO of the Hungarian energy company MOL, Zsolt Hernadi, after a European Court in Luxembourg said Hungary should not have ignored the warrant.

In late July, the Court of Justice of the European Union said Hungary should not have ignored the warrant based only on a decision of its Public Prosecutor’s Office to close a criminal investigation within which he was questioned only as a witness.  

“Judicial authorities of the Member States are required to adopt a decision on any European arrest warrant communicated to them,” the Court said.

After that, the Croatian lawyer for Hernadi said that the Court of Justice of the European Union did not say that Hungary had to extradite Hernadi but that a Hungarian court has to decide on Croatia’s extradition request.  

The European arrest warrant for Hernadi, which some states have ignored, was issued after Croatia’s USKOK anti-corruption office accused him of giving former Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader EUR 10 million in bribes so that MOL could have management rights in Croatian oil company INA.  

In December 2015, Sanader’s corruption trial was combined with Hernadi’s case, but the latter’s defence asked that the case file be translated into Hungarian. They also claimed that Hernadi had been acquitted of bribing Sanader in a private suit in Hungary.

At the end of 2017, Croatia’s Supreme Court quashed a decision of May 30, 2017 whereby Zagreb’s County Court suspended the Sanader-Hernadi trial while ruling on appeals filed by USKOK and Hernadi’s defence.

Last week, the County Court adjourned a preliminary hearing in the proceedings until September.