The Supreme Court has upheld the Zagreb County Court ruling in the so-called "Small Agrokor" case, according to which Agrokor's former owner Ivica Todoric and his associates were acquitted of having damaged the conglomerate for around €1.25 million.

The Supreme Court confirmed to the Croatian state news agency Hina on Thursday that it had rejected the appeal by the State Attorney’s Office and upheld the Zagreb County Court’s ruling.

The Supreme Court ruled that the first-instance verdict is final at its session held on 25 January this year.

Explaining the first-instance verdict delivered at the beginning of October 2020, Zagreb County Court Judge Maja Stipic-Stampar said that the witnesses refuted the prosecution’s claims that no consultancy services were necessary and that they were engaged exclusively to extract money from Agrokor.

Judge Stipic-Stampar pointed out that until the court proceedings were initiated, no one had withdrawn the disputed €1.25 million from the company’s Swiss account, while Agrokor’s Extraordinary Administration later paid out more than €83 million for numerous consultants.

In addition to the former president of Agrokor’s management board Ivica Todoric, the prosecution also charged former Agrokor’s executive finance director Anta Huljev, management board member Piruska Canjuga and Nicola De Rossi as the responsible person in the Siggman AG Swiss consulting company.

Defendants denied their guilt from the beginning

From the beginning, all the defendants denied the charges.

The prosecution claimed that Todoric and Huljev abused their position in 2013 because they facilitated the payment of €1.25 million to the benefit of the Swiss company for consulting services, knowing that they were not and would not be performed for the conglomerate, thus causing damage to it.

The indictment said that the Swiss company inappropriately benefited, while the conglomerate was damaged for €1.25 million. De Rossi was accused of helping Todoric and Huljev by issuing invoices, in the name of the Swiss company, for the allegedly performed consulting services.

Piruska Canjuga was charged with instigating Todoric and De Rossi, and the indictment stated that the real owners of the Swiss trading company were actually Huljev and Canjuga.

Todoric has been under investigation since November 2017 for the illegal acquisition of more than one billion kuna, and the state attorney indicted Todoric in September 2020 in the main part of the Agrokor case, but that indictment has not yet been confirmed in court.