A session of a panel of judges examining grounds for an indictment by the anti-corruption agency USKOK in a case in which former Deputy Prime Minister Damir Polancec and seven former executives of the Podravka food company and their business partners are charged with defrauding Podravka of at least HRK 400 million (approx. EUR 54 million), was adjourned on Wednesday, after the defence team asked that evidence which they described as unlawful be removed from the case file.
The decision will be handed down by Monday, when the panel of judges is also expected to decide on the grounds for the indictment, presiding judge Ivan Turudic said.
He added that the file in the case dubbed "Spice", which consists of over 40,000 pages, was the biggest file at the Zagreb County Court.
The other accused in the case are former Podravka executives Darko Marinac, Zdravko Sestak, Josip Pavlovic and Sasa Romac; the owner and manager of the SMS company from Split, Srdjan Mladinic; a co-owner of the Fima Grupa company from Varazdin, Milan Horvat; and attorney Zoran Markovic.
They are charged with conspiracy to commit crime, abuse of powers, incitement of abuse of powers, and illegal brokerage.
The attorney for second defendant Darko Marinac, Veljko Miljevic, said the defence, among other things, requested that the financial expert evaluation, on which the indictment is based, be thrown out. The lawyer said the Criminal Procedure Act stipulates that expert evaluations in such complex cases need to be made by a specialised institution or a team of experts and not only one court expert.
"This expert evaluation not only lacks credibility, but is also unlawful," Miljevic said.
The attorney said the 358-page indictment never explained how the defendants planned to take over Podravka shares. "The indictment alleges that the end goal was to take over as much as 75 percent of the stock, and that is science fiction. They would have needed HRK 1.67 billion to be able to do that," Miljevic said.
Sestak's attorney Mate Matic said that all evidence that USKOK introduced in its investigation was unlawful. Matic claims the defendants' rights were violated during the investigation because their lawyers could not be present during the questioning of witnesses.
"We believe that the Criminal procedure Act is not good and needs to be changed," Matic said.
The defence lawyers reiterated that before ex-deputy prime minister Polancec became a suspect, USKOK had no jurisdiction in this case, as no state official was under investigation.
Leaving the courtroom, Polancec declined to comment on today's hearing. However, he commented on yesterday's incident when he lunged at a photographer who tried to take pictures of him in the street. "My reaction to the unprofessional behaviour of your colleague was inappropriate and I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to the man," Polancec told the press.
Since this is one of the most extensive cases in the history of the Croatian judiciary, the panel of judges will convene again on January 17.
After the second hearing, the judges will either confirm the indictment, throw it out or return it to the prosecution to complete it.
If the indictment is confirmed, the court will schedule a preliminary hearing before another panel of judges which is to set a date for the start of the trial and decide on evidence to be presented at the trial and the witnesses to be heard.
The defence said that if the indictment was confirmed, they would call to the witness stand state officials who were in office at the time relevant to the indictment, including former prime minister Ivo Sanader.
Legal representatives for Podravka have requested that the indictees return the embezzled money.
