"What I can say is that I am not guilty. I did not take a commission for the Hypo loan approved either in 1994 or 1995... I did not receive any commission in the INA-MOL case either," Sanader said in the interview which the paper published on Monday.

He went on to say that at the trials currently being conducted by the Zagreb court against him, witnesses from Russia and Hungary testified that they had given that money to a key witness Robert Jezic as a fee for his lobbying for the Druzba Adria project.

The former premier and the former leader of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) said that the man named Eugen Laxa, did exist.

"Laxa exists. He is a successful businessman in Brazil... According to witnesses' testimonies, he received the commission," Sanader told the Austrian paper, concerning the prosecution's claims that Sanader used the name of Laxa in transactions of kickbacks.

As for the circumstances of the arrival of the Hypo Banka in Croatia, Sanader said that the then Austrian Foreign Minister Alois Mock suggested in a letter to his Croatian counterpart Mate Granic, that this Austrian regional financial institution should come to Croatia's market.

"It was important for us then to have an international bank come (into the country)," said Sanader, who was the deputy foreign minister at the time relevant for charges in the Hypo bank case.

Asked by the newspaper's journalist whether his claims that the trials against him were politically motivated and that the Chief State Prosecutor Mladen Bajic, following instruction from former PM Jadranka Kosor, was waging a war against him, could be interpreted that Croatia's judiciary was not independent, Sanader said that he did not think that the judiciary was not independent and that this claim referred only to the state prosecutor.