The anti-corruption agency USKOK on Friday appealed the Zagreb County Court ruling according to which former prime minister Ivo Sanader was guilty of war profiteering because he received during the war kickbacks from Austria's Hypo bank which gave Croatia a loan to purchase embassy buildings.

At the time, acting within his capacity as deputy foreign minister in charge of negotiations to secure the loan, Sanader used the state of war to gain personal profit.

“The defendant was found guilty and was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for war profiteering. USKOK believes the sentence is too lenient and the Zagreb County Court did not acknowledge aggravating circumstances to the extent it should have, while at the same time acknowledging mitigating circumstances,” USKOK said in a press release.

In the Hypo case, Sanader was found guilty of taking HRK 3.6 million in kickbacks from Austria’s Hypo bank in return for letting the bank give Croatia a loan to buy diplomatic office buildings.

Since the deal took place during Croatia’s war in the 90s, Sanader was convicted of war profiteering.

At the end of the trial, Sanader denied prosecution claims that he was a war profiteer but the prosecutor said in his closing arguments that war profiteering had been proved and that Sanader had been downplaying his role the whole time.

Sanader was already sentenced in this case, when he was also sentenced for taking a bribe from MOL director Zsolt Hernadi in exchange of management rights in Croatia’s oil company INA.

However, the Constitutional Court quashed the ruling in the Hypo case and requested a retrial.

It was the first sentence for war profiteering delivered after the Constitutional Court ruled that there was no statute of limitations on that crime. Quashing it, the Court said the Zagreb County Court and the Supreme Court did not establish if the statute of limitations had run out when Sanader was accused and that they failed to enforce a more lenient law.