Former Istria County prefect Ivan Jakovcic on Monday testified at the trial of former Sisak County prefect Marina Lovric-Merzel, charged with corruption, money laundering and embezzlement.

Jakovcic said he had cooperated with Lovric-Merzel while serving as the Istria County prefect and confirmed that Lovric-Merzel, in her capacity as Sisak County prefect, had visited Peroj, Istria in 2007 to attend a gathering of ethnic Montenegrins.

The witness told Zagreb County Court he was certain that the former Sisak County prefect had been in Peroj on that occasion, however he could not remember who had been in her company.

He said that such gatherings usually lasted two or three days, adding that although Istria County was a co-organiser of the meetings, it had not arranged accommodation for the participants.

“I think that was within the remit of the municipality of Vodnjan where Peroj is located,” he said.

Jakovcic was the last witness proposed by the defence.

The next hearing is scheduled for 8 March.

Lovric-Merzel, the former Social Democratic Party (SDP) head of Sisak-Moslavina County went on trial before Zagreb County Court in late June 2018 for bribe-taking, money laundering and embezzling public money. The trial opened with the reading of an eight-count indictment, which lists all the crimes committed and alleges that the accused defrauded the county budget of several million kuna.

Lovric-Merzel pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

Although the indictment was confirmed in late 2015, the start of the trial was delayed several times because Judge Ivan Turudic overturned the plea bargain between the prosecution and a co-defendant, businessman Zeljko Zuzic, who admitted in 2016 that he had given Lovric-Merzel 100,000 euro in bribes.

Under the deal, Zuzic was to be given a suspended sentence of one year with four years’ probation, but Judge Turudic insisted that the suspended sentence was incommensurate with the crime alleged.

The USKOK prosecution twice filed applications for protection of legality, which the Supreme Court eventually granted saying that courts should not intervene in the content of plea bargains between defendants and prosecutors, but should only verify their legality.

At a pre-trial hearing, the accused Zvonko Rozic, a former CEO of the state-owned Hrvatske Sume forest management company, pleaded guilty and was given a suspended sentence of eight months with two years’ probation.

The other defendants accused by the Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organised Crime (USKOK) in this case include Silvijo Kobescak, chairman of the supervisory board of the Ceste Sisak road company, Bernard Popec, who sold a building for the Accidents and Emergencies Service to the county authorities at an inflated price, and Dalibor Rozankovic, Lovric-Merzel’s nephew. They all pleaded not guilty.