HDZ attorneys Davor Budin and Tomislav Penic said they had identified a number of flaws in the indictment and believed they would be able to challenge the indictment in the forthcoming trial.

Budin said the indictment was "deficient in its very approach."

He said the anti-corruption agency USKOK was wrong to "equate the HDZ, a political party, with a company of the simplest type with a single owner and a single responsible person." The ownership structure of the party is not like that, because the party is owned by all of its 220,000 members, he said.

"With such an approach, they have shown that they did not deal with the party's regulations, a fact that generated one flaw after another. They have not established the motive nor have they brought it into connection with the costs," said Budin, adding that "the costs obviously have nothing to do with the party."

Penic said that at the first hearing defence counsel would repeat the arguments presented previously in writing and reiterated at today's session of the Zagreb County Court.

He said he considered the first trial of a political party a challenge, the more so as the case file had 40,000 pages.

A representative of the HDZ, Damir Sesvecan, would not give any statements, saying that this was a legal and not a political matter.

Jadranka Slokovic, an attorney for former Prime Minister and HDZ leader Ivo Sanader, who like other indictees did not attend today's court session, said she expected the court to set a preparatory hearing in a month or so, at which a date for the start of the trial in the Fimi Media case would be set.

One of the most extensive indictments in the history of the Croatian judiciary, with more than 500 pages, was upheld by a panel of judges presided over by Judge Gordana Mihela Grahovac. The same panel of judges in mid December allowed that Sanader be released on bail.

Along with Sanader, who allegedly made an illegal gain of 15 million kuna and the HDZ, into whose slush funds the indictment alleges 31.6 million kuna was syphoned to in the period from 2003 to 2009, also indicted in the case are former HDZ officials - party treasurer Mladen Barisic, government spokesman and head of the HDZ's election headquarters Ratko Macek, accountant Branka Pavosevic, Fimi Media company owner Nevenka Jurak, her two associates Anita Loncar Papes and Bojan Dimic, and their companies Fimi Media, Ani-Lon and Onida.

The indictment does not refer to directors of public companies and ministers who paid money to the HDZ through Fimi Media. USKOK has said that it will launch separate proceedings against them.