The Zagreb County Court will deliver on Friday a sentence in a retrial of former prime minister Ivo Sanader, his former associates and his former party HDZ, the first political party indicted for corruption, for siphoning money via the Fimi Media marketing agency.

While the USKOK anti-corruption office believes that it proved during the retrial as well that Sanader, his former party and the other defendants were guilty of corruption, the defence claim there is no evidence.

The HDZ’s lawyers said the party should be held accountable for a misdemeanor, while Sanader’s defence reiterated that the incrimination was based solely on the “contradictory, inconsistent and illogical” testimony of former HDZ treasurer Mladen Barisic.

In his closing arguments on Monday, Barisic’s counsel Tomislav Grahovac said his client acted strictly on Sanader’s orders and that Sanader ran the HDZ in an authoritarian way. In doing so, counsel said, Barisic did not question Sanader’s orders, confident that he was doing everything for the party’s benefit.

Grahovac said that at that time nobody dared to contradict Sanader and that Barisic was close to him, despite the former prime minister denying it.

Besides Sanader, Barisic and the HDZ, the other defendants are former HDZ accountant Branka Pavosevic and former government and HDZ spokesman Ratko Macek. Another defendant, Fimi Media owner Nevenka Jurak, died during the retrial.

The retrial for the siphoning of money of from state institutions and companies via the agency began in 2016, a year after the Supreme Court quashed a conviction delivered in 2013.

In the first trial, Sanader was sentenced to nine years and ordered to return over HRK 15 million in illegal gains, while the HDZ was ordered to return more than HRK 24 million and fined HRK 5 million.

In the first trial, Barisic, Pavosevic and Jurak were given milder prison sentences and ordered to return the money. Unlike then, in the retrial they pleaded not guilty. Macek and Sanader were the only ones denying the charges from the start. In the first trial, Macek was given a suspended sentence.

Sanader has been in prison since 2019, serving a sentence in the Planinska corruption case. In the meantime, he has been sentenced pending appeal for taking a bribe from the Hungarian energy group MOL and, in 2018, for taking a kickback from the Austrian Hypo bank. He has been acquitted pending appeal for the sale of electricity from the HEP provider at cheaper prices.

(€1 = HRK 7.5)