Croatia's Supreme Court has rejected the request by State Attorney-General Zlata Hrvoj-Sipek to apply the extraordinary legal remedy in the Agrokor case, the court reported on Friday.

The Supreme Court established that there were no violations of the laws cited in the request made by the State Attorney-General Hrvoj-Sipek who has recently decided to challenge the decisions of the Zagreb County Court and the High Criminal Court to dismiss an expert financial evaluation in the Agrokor case and therefore she has resorted to an extraordinary legal remedy.

DORH explained then that the request for the extraordinary legal remedy, in which the protection of legality is requested before the Supreme Court, was forwarded to the Supreme Court as the prosecution believes that the Criminal Procedure Act was violated.

In November 2023, the High Criminal Court ruled that the report submitted by the State Attorney’s Office’s (DORH), as the key piece of evidence against former Agrokor owner Ivica Todoric was inadmissible. The report cost €1.3 million, for which DORH was given money from the state budget. The court ruled it inadmissible because the experts who did the evaluation were in a conflict of interest. DORH hired KPMG Poland for the job, but the bulk of the work was done by KPMG Croatia, which was also working for the emergency administration in Agrokor.

The defence for Ivica Todoric, a former owner of Agrokor, already insisted on the inadmissibility of that evidence.

The High Criminal Court upheld the Zagreb County Court indictment panel’s decision from March 2023 that the expert financial evaluation, on which the indictment for siphoning €160 million in the Big Agrokor case is based, is inadmissible evidence.

Todoric and 14 others are charged with defrauding the former conglomerate of €160 million between 2006 and 2017. Prosecutors claim that Todoric gained €122.58 million and the Dutch Agrokor Investment BV 42.4 million.

The Zagreb County Court indictment panel has been discussing the merits of the 459-page Agrokor indictment since 2021.