Ivo Sanader denied the charge of war profiteering in the Hypo corruption case at the start of a retrial before the Zagreb County Court on Friday after the Supreme Court quashed the trial court verdict of 2018 that sentenced the former prime minister to two and a half years in prison.

The Supreme Court quashed the verdict in March this year saying that the trial court had failed to prove that the conduct of the former prime minister and leader of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party had a negative impact on people’s lives and the country’s economic potential during the 1991-1995 war.

The indictment alleges that Hypo Bank paid Sanader, who at the time served as deputy foreign minister, a HRK 3.6 million (€480,000) commission in late 1994 and early 1995 after Croatia was granted a loan to purchase buildings for its embassies.

In that way, according to the prosecutors, Sanader made undue gain in disproportion to the basic national and social interests in a financially and economically difficult situation caused by the war.

The Supreme Court said that an act of war profiteering must be the result of one’s deliberately taking advantage of the state of war to the detriment of the material living conditions of the people and the economic potential of the state. It must result in serious, large-scale disruptions to the public order and jeopardise the country’s basic values or national and social interests.

It is unclear in the trial court’s verdict how the commission of the alleged crime with a financial gain of HRK 3.6 million had seriously brought into question the functioning of the state and jeopardised the fundamental values of the state and society in the war, the Supreme Court explained.

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

In mid-October 2021, the Croatian highest court partly upheld the verdict from a retrial in the Fimi Media case, under which Sanader’s prison term was reduced from eight to seven years and the HDZ was ordered to pay back the HRK 3.5 million it had siphoned from state institutions and companies.

In late October 2021, the Supreme Court confirmed the trial court verdict that sentenced Sanader for taking bribes from Zsolt Hernadi, the CEO of the Hungarian energy company MOL. Hernadi, who was tried in absentia, was sentenced to two years.

In mid-November last year, Sanader, together with businessman Robert Ježić, was acquitted of selling electricity to Jezic’s Dioki company at lower pricesat the expense of the state-owned electricity provider HEP.