Former Prime Minister and HDZ leader Ivo Sanader has been sentenced to 8 years in prison in the Fimi Media corruption retrial on Friday. Former HDZ treasurer, Mladen Barisic, and HDZ accountant, Branka Pavosevic, have also been sentenced to prison, while the HDZ as an organisation has been fined 3.5 million kuna (€463,000) and ordered to pay back 14.6 million kuna (€1.9 million) into the state budget.

Sanader and his co-defendants were found guilty for siphoning around 70 million kuna (€9.3 million) from state-owned companies and institutions through the Fimi Media marketing agency during Sanader’s tenure as prime minister from 2003 to 2009, with some of the siphoned money ending up in HDZ party’s slush fund.

The verdict in the retrial handed down on Friday by the Zagreb County Court sentenced Barisic, pending appeal, to two years and 10 months in prison, while Pavosevic was sentenced to 16 months in prison.

Former spokesman of Sanader’s government and HDZ party, Ratko Macek, who had been given a suspended sentence in the initial trial, has been acquitted this time around.

Although the court ruled that Sanader had illegally gained 275,000 kuna (€36,000) personally, it ordered that, once the ruling becomes final, 15.8 million kuna (€2 million) of unexplained origin controlled by Sanader’s family should be confiscated as well.

Once the verdict becomes final, pending appeal, another 11.9 million kuna (€1.6 million) will be seized from the Fimi Media marketing agency. As for the agency’s owner, Nevenka Jurak, who died during the retrial, the court established that she herself had illegally gained slightly more than 2.5 million kuna (€330,000).

The verdict means the ruling HDZ is the first political party in the country tried and sentenced for corruption, twice – and some of the money they have been ordered to return has already been blocked in their bank accounts.

The verdict on Friday marks just the latest episode in a marathon retrial which began in 2016, a year after the Supreme Court had rescinded a sentencing verdict handed down in 2013.

In the original trial, Sanader was sentenced to nine years in prison and ordered to return over 15 million (€2 million) in illegal gains, while HDZ was ordered to return more than 24 million kuna (€3.2 million) and fined 5 million kuna (€660,000).

Barisic, Pavosevic, and Jurak – the trio the prosecutors alleged organised the siphoning operation, had been given shorter prison sentences and were ordered to return the money after pleading guilty. However, in the retrial they pleaded not guilty, saying that they had been pressured into confessing.

Macek and Sanader denied the charges from the start. In the first trial, Macek was given a suspended sentence.

Sanader has been in prison since 2019, serving a prison sentence in an so-called Planinska corruption case, an unrelated case in which public funds were used to buy a property at an inflated price.

In the meantime, he has also been sentenced, pending appeal, for taking a bribe from the Hungarian energy group Mol for handing them managing rights over Croatia’s oil company Ina, and also in 2018, for taking kickbacks from the Austrian Hypo Bank.

He has been acquitted, pending appeal, for approving the sale of electricity produced by state-owned power board HEP to a company owned by magnate Rober Jezic at rates below the market prices.

(€1 = 7.55 kuna)