Former Croatian prime minister Ivo Sanader and Hungarian energy group MOL CEO Zsolt Hernadi were found guilty on Monday of taking and giving a bribe in the INA-MOL case, for which Sanader was sentenced to six and Hernadi to two years' imprisonment pending appeal.

Explaining the retrial verdict, Zagreb County Court judge Maja Stampar Stipic said Sanader had arranged with Hernadi to give MOL controlling rights in its Croatian peer INA in exchange for €10 million. In doing so, Sanader used his position and authority as prime minister to make it seem that it was necessary to divest INA’s gas business and change the shareholders’ agreement, the judge added.

Neither defendant was in the courtroom because Sanader stayed in Remetinec prison and Hernadi is out of reach to the Croatian authorities.

Sanader, who recently underwent a surgery which the court did not think was necessary, was not present during the closing arguments either, when the USKOK anti-corruption office concluded that he had endangered state interests by taking a bribe from Hernadi. The defence claimed there were no grounds for a conviction.

Under today’s verdict, a company owned by Robert Jezic, who testified that half of the bribe to Sanader was paid through him, must repay €5 million to the state.

The retrial in the INA-MOL case was requested by the Constitutional Court, which quashed the first sentence against Sanader. At that time, Hernadi was not accused yet and Hungary dismissed numerous requests that he be questioned, claiming a Hungarian court had acquitted him of the same charges in a private suit.

In the first trial, Sanader was sentenced to eight and a half years’ imprisonment. Aside from the MOL bribe, he also stood trial for war profiteering, i.e. for taking a commission from the Hypo bank which gave Croatia a loan during the Homeland War. He was sentenced on that charge, during a retrial, to two and a half years’ imprisonment but the time he spent in custody was counted against the sentence so he did not go to prison.

He did end up in prison in April this year when the Supreme Court raised his sentence in the Planinska corruption case. He is still on trial in the Fimi Media corruption case in which he was sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment, but the sentence has been quashed by the Supreme Court.