The Zagreb County Court on Tuesday upheld the first indictment against the former owner of the Agrokor food and retail group, Ivica Todoric, former Agrokor managers Ante Huljev and Piruska Canjuga, and Austrian national Nicole de Rossi.

The prosecution alleges that Todoric, as Agrokor Management Board chair, and Huljev, as the company’s executive director of finance, abused their powers in 2013 by enabling the payment of €1.25 million of the company’s money to a Swiss company for fictitious consulting services.

Through this operation, the Swiss company obtained illegal gain while Agrokor was defrauded of €1.25 million, the county prosecutor’s office said after issuing the indictment in late September.

De Rossi is charged with helping Todoric and Huljev by issuing a bill on behalf of the Swiss company for the fictitious consulting services.

The indictment alleges that the actual owners of the Swiss company were Huljev and Canjuga.

The indictees are charged with incitement to and aiding and abetting abuse of trust in business operations.

Todoric has been under investigation since November 2017 on the suspicion of making an illegal gain of more than a billion kuna. That investigation also covers his sons Ivan and Ante Todoric and 12 Agrokor managers and auditors.

Investigative custody was set only for Todoric, who, after his extradition from London to Croatia was taken to Zagreb’s Remetinec prison. On 20 November 2018 he was released on bail in the amount of 7.5 million kuna and banned from leaving Zagreb.