USKOK anti-corruption office deputy head Marija Vucko said on Friday that the prosecution was 'in principle' satisfied with the sentencing verdict in the Fimi Media corruption case earlier on Friday, but not so much with prison sentences handed down by the court and the value of assets ordered to be seized,and would therefore appeal asking for harsher sentences for former PM Ivo Sanader and his co-defendents.

Earlier in the day, Zagreb County Court sentenced former PM and HDZ leader Ivo Sanader to eight years in prison for siphoning, together with his co-defendants, around HRK 70 million (€9.3 million) from state-owned companies and institutions through the Fimi Media marketing agency.

The HDZ party, into whose slush fund some of the siphoned money had allegedly ended up, was found “responsible” and fined HRK 3.5 million and ordered to pay illegal gain in the amount of HRK 14.6 million into the state budget.

Former HDZ treasurer Mladen Barisic was sentenced to two years and 10 months in prison and accountant Branka Pavosevic was sentenced to 16 months in prison.

Former government and HDZ spokesman Ratko Macek, who was given a suspended sentence in the initial trial, has been acquitted.

The retrial in the case started in 2016, a year after the Supreme Court quashed a sentencing verdict handed down in 2013 by Judge Ivana Krsul.

“In principle, we are satisfied with the ruling, naturally not entirely in the part where the indictees were found not guilty. We are not satisfied that donations were left out from the factual description and consider them illegal gain as they were not raised legally but as part of a conspiracy. This is not about a simple failure to register donations in the party accounting books, which would be a misdemeanor, but about illegal gain, which is why they should have been part of the adjudicated incriminations,” said deputy USKOK head Kovac.

She also believes, among other things, that the court should have applied expanded confiscation of illegal gain in Sanader’s case.

The court ruled that Sanader had illegally gained HRK 275,000, ordering that, if the ruling becomes final, the court confiscate the HRK 15.8 million the origin of which Sanader’s family failed to explain.

“The disproportion was estimated at HRK 23.7 million, which is the value of the property which Sanader could not legally justify,” she said, adding that the prosecution would appeal in that regard as well as against the sentences.

(€1 = 7.55 kuna)