The former CEO of the state-owned power company HEP, Ivan Mravak, was sentenced to a year and a half in prison on Wednesday following a plea agreement with the anti-corruption office USKOK.
Mravak admitted to USKOK investigators that he had acquired 600,000 kuna for the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party in 2007 on the orders of the party's chief treasurer at the time, Mladen Barisic.
Judges at the Zagreb County Court accepted the plea agreement at a closed hearing on Wednesday. After the hearing, Mravak told reporters outside the courthouse that he had said a year and a half ago that he would defend himself by telling the truth regardless of possible consequences.
His attorney, Branko Seric, said that when the judgement became final his client would have to serve one year in prison because he had already spent the remainder of the sentence in detention.
Early in November, USKOK indicted Mravak, HEP production manager Petar Cubelic and HEP management board member Zeljko Kljakovic Gaspic for soliciting 2 million euros in bribes from executives of the Zagreb firm Monting PIM Ljubo Busic and Ante Matic for contracts for the construction of thermal power plants.
Busic and Matic paid 600,000 kuna in bribes to Mravak, which he passed on to HDZ treasurer Barisic.
Media speculate that USKOK made an agreement with Mravak so that he would agree to testify in the Fimi Media case, in which former Prime Minister and HDZ president Ivo Sanader, several private individuals and legal entities, and the HDZ as a legal entity are accused of siphoning money from government ministries and public companies into the HDZ's slush fund. The funds were siphoned off through the privately-owned marketing company Fimi Media.
Seric confirmed to reporters on Wednesday that Mravak had been granted "partial immunity" and would appear as a prosecution witness in the Fimi Media case.
The four other accused have also reached plea agreements with USKOK. The two HEP executives were also given prison terms of a year and a half each, Busic was sentenced to ten months for giving bribes, and Matic to seven months. Busic and Matic had their sentences suspended for two years.
Seric said that the convicts would not have to pay back the 600,000 kuna because they had not acquired the financial gain for themselves but for the HDZ.
USKOK prosecutor Vanja Marusic said she was pleased with the plea agreements. She noted that all five accused had turned to USKOK of their own accord and proposed a plea agreement.
