The Constitutional Court has rejected a complaint by former prime minister and HDZ party leader Ivo Sanader requesting the annulment of the six-year sentence for a bribe from CEO of the Hungarian MOL oil company, Zsolt Hernadi.

Constitutional Court Chief Justice Miroslav Separovic confirmed to the Croatian state news agency Hina that the court had rejected Sanader’s appeal.

Separovic added that the Constitutional Court has not yet discussed the appeal lodged by Hernadi, who was sentenced in absentia to two years in prison.

Sanader and Hernadi were convicted by Zagreb County Court and that ruling was upheld by the Supreme Court in October last year. The two were convicted of bribery worth €10 million to ensure amendments to a contract with Croatia’s INA oil company.

The amendments were intended to enable MOL to have a dominant influence over the Croatian oil company. The two also bargained on the divestiture of unprofitable gas operations from INA and the transfer of those operations to be within Croatia’s responsibility, according to the ruling delivered by the Supreme Court.

That court claimed that abusing his position and authority, Sanader made sure that the government would conclude the contentious contracts and accept MOL’s conditions.

Hernadi, on the other hand, ensured the payment of €10 million to Sanader as reward.

The first conviction in the Ina-MOL case, which was handed down to Sanader together with the verdict for war profiteering for receiving a commission from the Austrian Hypo bank, was quashed in 2014 by the Constitutional Court, which ordered a retrial by Zagreb County Court.

Sanader has been in prison since April 2019, when the Supreme Court increased his sentence for corruption in the Planinska case.

In mid-October 2021, the highest court partially confirmed the verdict in a retrial in the Fimi media case, according to which HDZ was ordered to pay HRK 3.5 million in fines for siphoning money from state institutions and companies, while Sanader’s sentence was reduced from eight to seven years.

Last week, the retrial against Sanader for the Hypo graft began anew at the Zagreb County Court, while the Supreme Court confirmed Sanader’s only acquittal together with entrepreneur Robert Jezic for selling cheap electricity to Jezic’s Dioki company at the detriment of the national HEP electricity provider, in mid-November 2021.