The MOL energy group said on Monday, after the Croatian Supreme Court upheld a verdict sentencing its CEO Zsolt Hernadi for bribing former Croatian prime minister Ivo Sanader, that Hernadi would appeal to the Croatian Constitutional Court over "grave injustices in Croatian proceedings."

The Croatian Supreme Court dismissed the appeals by the USKOK anti-corruption office and the two defendants, upholding Sanader’s sentence of six years for taking a bribe from Hernadi and Hernadi’s sentence of two years.

The MOL Group said in a press release it was disappointed by the Supreme Court ruling which upheld the Zagreb County Court conviction in the Sanader case despite the fact, MOL added, that prior decisions by Hungarian authorities and international arbitration, the latter initiated by Croatia, established that neither MOL nor its officials had committed any crime.

For more than ten years an unjust trial went on in Croatia, motivated by economic interests, in which the Croatian Constitutional Court ruled in 2015 already that Sanader was sentenced at the expense of serious rights violations, the group said.

The Constitutional Court pointed to several serious errors of procedure and instructed the Zagreb County Court to hold a retrial, it added.

Since even more serious and more obvious rights violations were committed during the retrial and not even the minimum conditions for an equitable trial were met, MOL is confident that the latest ruling will not pass the constitutionality test either, according to the press release.

It noted that in 2018 the Budapest County Court found that there was danger that the right to an equitable trial would be violated during the proceedings in Croatia and that an unbiased trial could not be ensured.

MOL said the arbitration procedure initiated by Croatia concluded with the finding that Croatia could not prove that Hernadi had bribed Sanader.

MOL insists on its previous stance, resolutely rejecting the accusations of inappropriate business conduct, and will continue to use every means to defend itself from unfounded accusations of any crime, according to the press release.

MOL said that its Board of Directors continued to trust and support Hernadi, Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO.

With regard to Croatian oil company INA, in which MOL has a majority stake, MOL said it remained committed to a corporate management that was in INA’s best interest.