The decision to reject the European arrest warrant which Croatia issued for Hungarian MOL energy company CEO Zsolt Hernadi over doubts that he would have a fair trial, has little to do with the Constitutional Court and fair trials, said President of Croatian Constitutional Court Miroslav Separovic on Friday.

Hungarian media reported on Thursday that a Hungarian court had rejected Croatia’s request for the extradition of Zsolt Hernadi.

The arrest warrant on Hernadi was issued after Croatia’s anti-corruption police Uskok accused him of giving former Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader €10 million in bribes so that the Hungarian oil company MOL could acquire management rights in Croatian Ina energy company.

The court said that one of the reasons to reject the request was that Croatian Constitutional court had overturned an earlier ruling in the case of Ivo Sanader in which Sanader was sentenced to ten years in prison for abuse of power and accepting bribes. The ruling was overturned because the Court had determined that the defendant’s right to fair trial was violated during the trial.

“I cannot comment on that, there’s something else at play here. In our (Constitutional Court’s) decision, we explained how Mr Sanader’s right to fair trial was violated, which doesn’t mean they would be violated again in another trial. The Court had made several similar decisions and the violations were righted in the retrials,” Separovic told Croatian state news agency Hina.

Something else is at play here, which has nothing to do with the Constitutional Court or the right to fair trial, he added.

Hernadi’s Croatian attorney, Laura Valkovic, said that, according to the oral explanation of the decision, conveyed to her by her Hungarian colleagues, there is doubt that Hernadi would have a fair trial in Croatia.

The trial will continue without Hernadi, Valkovic said, adding that the Hungarian court’s decision was final because both the prosecution and the defence have waived their right to appeal.

Sanader’s case was joined with Hernadi’s in December 2015, but MOL CEO’s defence requested that the entire file be translated to Hungarian.

The hearing on the trial for Sanader and Hernadi in the Ina-MOL case was pushed back in July this year until September 17.

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