The re-trial of Croatia's former prime minister and former leader of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party, Ivo Sanader, in the so-called Ina-Mol case, resumed on Monday with a medical expert assessing Sanader's health saying that he is fit enough to appear in court proceedings twice a week, for up to three hours at a time.

In the re-trial, Sanader is indicted with taking kickbacks to cede management rights at the Croatian oil company Ina to Hungary’s Mol energy group. Mol’s top executive, Zsolt Hernadi, who is at large in Hungary, is his co-defendant.

Testifying in the trial today was a member of Ina management board, Davor Mayer, who spoke about Ina’s importance for the country’s economy, and the changes that the 2009 agreement between the Zagreb government and Mol brought.

“The 2003 agreement defined Mol as a strategic partner of Croatia, with its acquisition of 25 percent of shares in state-owned Ina. This gave Croatian government five members on the management board, with Mol appointing another two. Later amendments to the original agreement in 2009 changed the ratio to Mol’s favour, which was effectively given 100 percent management rights at Ina,” said Mayer.

The re-trial against Sanader and Hernadi started in October 2018. Sanader keeps denying the charges that he, acting as prime minister, had changed the management rights agreement with Mol in exchange for a €10 million bribe.

In the original trial, in which he was sentenced to ten years in prison in 2012, he had also denied the charges. In 2014 the Supreme Court reduced the sentence to eight and a half years. In 2015 the sentence was quashed by the Constitutional Court based on procedural errors and sent to re-trial.

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