Zlata Vrdoljak, an employee of the Austrian Hypo Bank, told the Zagreb County Court via video link from Klagenfurt on Thursday that the bank granted a loan to Croatia in 1995 at the initiative of the then Austrian foreign minister Alois Mock, and that in loan negotiations Croatia was initially represented by foreign minister Mate Granic and later by his deputy, Ivo Sanader, who is on trial.
Vrdoljak was an assistant loan officer at the bank at the time, and although she did not work on the loan that was granted to Croatia, she said she had heard management board member Wolfgang Kulterer say at several meetings that Hypo Bank had entered the Croatian market at Mock's initiative, and that Kulterer and his associate Guenther Striedinger had negotiated the loan with Croatian officials.
The witness said she did not know if management board member Joerg Schuster had also been involved in the negotiations. Schuster was scheduled to testify today via video link from a district court in Klagenfurt.
Vrdoljak said she did not know if a middleman had been involved in the deal with Croatia. She said that she knew from the documentation presented to her by Croatian prosecutors in April 2011 that Eugen Laxa and the London firm Bishops Dale were mentioned as recipients of a commission. She added that she never saw Laxa and did not know whether the commission was actually paid and to whom.
Responding to questions from Sanader's defence, Vrdoljak confirmed that she had worked with the London firm on other loan transactions as well and that its clients were mainly companies from Croatia. In conclusion, she said that engaging a middleman for a commission was not unusual in the bank's operation.
Sanader is charged with war profiteering because he allegedly received a commission from Hypo Bank after it granted a loan to Croatia in 1995 for the purchase of buildings for its embassies.
