The trial of Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandic in the case dubbed "public stalls" started in Zagreb on Thursday, with Bandic pleading not guilty to charges of defrauding the city budget of more than €40,000.

Bandic is charged with illegally using city’s stalls and funding to help a conservative Catholic NGO which collected signatures for a petition in May 2013 to request a referendum on amending the constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage.

Bandic and two other city officials are charged with helping the group by printing 700,000 leaflets, 15,000 posters, 120 billboards, and letting them use 50 of the city’s stalls to set up petition signing points around the city – all free of charge – as well as paying for their radio ad for 30,000 kuna (€4,000).

Using city-owned stalls is normally charged a fee, and the fee that the group should have paid is estimated at 308,000 kuna (€41,500).

Bandic was already indicted for the offence, but the charge was dismissed by court in July 2015 before the trial began. However, anti-graft police Uskok filed an appeal to the Supreme Court, which was accepted in May 2016, overturning lower court’s decision and ordering a re-trial.

He is also charged in a separate case, dubbed “Agram,” on suspicion of defrauding the city budget for several million kuna through a number of irregularities, and also for tax evasion by not paying taxes on donations he received during his 2010 failed presidential election campaign.

Bandic is currently serving his sixth consecutive term as Mayor of Zagreb, holding the office since May 2005. Until late 2009 he was a prominent member of the Social Democrats (SDP), before splitting with the party to run for President. Although he reached the run-off, he lost to SDP’s candidate Ivo Josipovic in January 2010.

He was arrested in October 2014 along a number of city officials in a corruption investigation, and was released from pre-trial detention in April 2015, returning to the post of mayor. In the last local election, in June 2017, he narrowly won his current term with 51.8 percent of the vote.

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