The former prefect of Sisak-Moslavina County, Marina Lovric-Merzel of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), was sentenced to six years in prison by the High Criminal Court on Friday for abuse of office, bribery and forgery. However, she will be tried again because she paid her private bills with money from the county budget.

Two years ago, the Zagreb County Court found her and three other defendants guilty in this case and sentenced the former prefect to seven years in prison.

Silvijo Kobescak, the former chairman of the supervisory board of the road construction company Ceste Sisak, was sentenced to one year in prison.

Bernard Popec, who had sold the district a building for emergency medical care above the market price, was sentenced to 1.5 years in prison.

The sentences for Kobescak and Popec were upheld by today’s final judgement of the Supreme Criminal Court.

Dalibor Rozankovic, the nephew of Lovric Merzel, who had laundered the money Lovric-Merzel had received in the form of bribes by buying a holiday flat, was also sentenced to 1.5 years in prison. However, the High Criminal Court changed his sentence and he will remain behind bars for half of his sentence, while the other half was commuted to a suspended sentence.

The indictment also included businessman Zeljko Zuzic, who entered into a plea bargain with prosecutors after admitting to paying Lovric-Merzel €100.000 in bribes and was sentenced to a suspended sentence of one year in prison with four years probation in 2016, as well as the former director of the forestry company Hrvatske Sume, Zvonko Rozic, who was sentenced to eight months in prison with two years probation after reaching a deal with the Office for Combating Corruption and Organised Crime (USKOK).

Lovric-Merzel and her co-defendants were arrested in April 2014 and four months later she resigned as prefect of Sisak-Moslavina County. The trial was opened in June 2018, but had to be resumed three months later after a judge withdrew from the case.

The judge who withdrew from the case was Ivan Turudic, the recently appointed State Attorney-General who left the Chamber in the case after being appointed to the High Criminal Court.

Turudic was also known for refusing to uphold the agreement between Zuzic and the USKOK.

In mid-2016, Turudic rejected the settlement on the grounds that the penalty was disproportionate to the offence. The USKOK then filed an initial application to protect the legality of the proceedings, which the Supreme Court granted at the end of 2017.