Josip Friscic, a former Parliament Deputy Speaker who used to be the president of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) when it was a junior partner in the HDZ-led governing coalition, on Thursday testified at the trial of former Prime Minister and Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) leader Ivo Sanader that he had never discussed with Sanader the matters relating to Croatia's oil and gas group INA and Hungary's MOL.
Friscic told the Zagreb County Court, which has indicted Sanader for EUR 10-million bribery he allegedly took to ensure for MOL a dominant position in INA, that had attended a meeting of the coalition's partners in late 2008 when the then Deputy Prime Minister Damir Polancec of the HDZ had outlined a grave energy situation in the country, INA's problems and changes in the company's ownership structure after MOL acquired nearly 50% of INA's equity and plans for possible divestiture of the gar business from INA.
According to the witness, Sanader was not present at that meeting. Friscic also said that Sanader had never asked him to discuss the INA-MOL matters and that they had never talked about that topic.
The former HSS president went on to say that as far as he knew, the two HSS ministers in the Sanader cabinet -- Bozidar Pankretic and Damir Bajs -- had not been pressured to vote for the modification of the INA's shareholders agreement in January 2009.
The trial of Sanader, charged with the alleged bribery in the INA-MOL case and with the alleged war profiteering in the case of the Hypo bank's lending to the Croatian foreign ministry in the mid-1990s, will resume next Thursday.
