The chief executive officer of Hungary's MOL Group, Jozsef Molnar, said at the Zagreb County Court on Wednesday that he was one of the signatories to a loan agreement between Hungary's OTP bank and Croatia's Fima Group, with MOL's guarantee, but that he had not taken part in the negotiations.
When the agreement was being negotiated in 2008, Molnar was MOL's deputy financial officer. Testifying in a corruption case named Spice, he said he did not take part in the negotiations and that his colleagues had drawn up an agreement that the MOL Board accepted.
He confirmed that the Croatian food company Podravka was included in the transaction because its stock was collateral for the loan.
Molnar said he had not met with Podravka officials.
Asked if the stock of the Croatian oil company INA was mentioned, he said the agreement stated that Podravka could settle its credit commitments with INA's shares.
Molnar said the deposit which MOL made when the agreement was being negotiated was paid back but could not say how much MOL had made on the deal.
The other witness today was Andras Huszar, who headed MOL's treasury department in 2008-09 and is today the executive director for finance at INA, in which MOL is the majority stockholder.
He said it was MOL's strategy department and not his department that worked on the loan agreement between OTP and Fima and that he heard about the signing from his colleagues.
He confirmed that he signed MOL's guarantee agreement with the OTP bank and that the amount of the guarantee had been determined in the previous agreement.
Huszar said he did not know who took part in the conclusion of the loan agreement on the Croatian side or whose initiative it was to include in the agreement the stipulation that Podravka could settle its credit commitments with INA's shares.
The loan agreement between OTP and Fima was signed in March 2009 and completed in late 2011 with a settlement which saw Podravka, OTP and MOL scrap all claims and commitments between the parties involved.
The indictment in the Spice case accuses former Croatian Deputy Prime Minister Damir Polancec, former Podravka executives Darko Marinac, Zdravko Sestak, Josip Pavlovic and Sasa Romac, Fima co-owner Milan Horvat, the owner and director of the Croatian SMS company, Srdjan Mladinic, and attorney Zoran Markovic.
They are charged with attempting to take over Podravka with the company's own money. They claim they were defending it from a hostile takeover.
