The owner of the Fimi Media advertising agency, Nevenka Jurak, charged together with former prime minister and HDZ leader Ivo Sanader in a case named after her agency, which has become a synonym for political corruption in Croatia, died in Zagreb on Monday.

Her attorney Kresimir Vilajtovic confirmed that Jurak had died of “a long and serious illness”.

Jurak’s illness was the reason why the retrial in the Fimi Media case and the presentation of Sanader’s defence before the Zagreb County Court was repeatedly postponed since mid-2018. Jurak’s attorneys claimed that she definitely wanted to attend hearings at which Sanader was to present his side of the story and answer questions.

In the retrial in this case the prosecution has again charged Sanader and other co-defendants with having siphoned around HRK 70 million from state institutions and companies (€9.39 million) into the HDZ’s slush fund.

Apart from Sanader, also standing trial in the Fimi Media case are former HDZ treasurer Mladen Barisic, former HDZ chief accountant Branka Pavosevic, and former HDZ and government spokesman Ratko Macek.

When Sanader and his co-defendants and former party were sentenced for corruption pending appeal in March 2014, Fimi Media was dissolved as a legal entity. However, since the Supreme Court quashed the trial court verdict, the agency survived even though under the initial verdict, Fimi Media and Jurak were to pay back close to HRK 15 million of unlawful gain.

In the first trial Sanader was sentenced to nine years in prison. He has dismissed the charges from the start unlike most of his co-defendants, including Jurak, who first pleaded guilty to corruption charges but at the start of the retrial said they were not guilty.