The High Criminal Court has ordered a re-examination of the legality of the financial evaluation in the Agrokor indictment, which has not been upheld yet, against former owner Ivica Todoric et al. for defrauding the conglomerate of HRK 1.2 billion.

The High Criminal Court said on Monday it had quashed the part of a Zagreb County Court decision which dismissed defence motions to leave out as illegal evidence a combined financial, bookkeeping and audit evaluation in the case.

The evaluation, for which Croatia paid HRK 8.6 million, was done by the Polish branch of KPMG. The defence claim the evaluation constitutes illegal evidence as KPMG’s Croatian branch worked on it too and suspect a conflict of interest because the Croatian branch was allegedly hired later on by Agrokor’s interim management.

The High Criminal Court found that the claims in the first-instance decision as to who made the combined expert evaluation were unclear and contradictory to a considerable extent.

Todoric and 14 others, including his two sons and closest associates, are suspected of defrauding Agrokor of HRK 1.2 billion between 2006 and 2017. The prosecution contends that Todoric gained HRK 923.6 million and that Agrokor Investment BV in the Netherlands obtained HRK 320 million.

The indictment in this case, dubbed Big Agrokor, was filed in September.

Early in October 2020, Todoric was acquitted pending appeal of charges that he defrauded the former conglomerate of €1.25 million in a case dubbed Little Agrokor.

(€1 = HRK 7.5)