Court spokesman Drazen Tripalo told the media on Monday he had not seen a decision to that effect.

Polancec and his attorney Anto Nobilo have not received it yet either.

Nobilo told reporters they had not received a Supreme Court ruling and that he had not been notified that Polancec's sentence had been reduced, apart from seeing reports in the media tonight, so he could neither confirm nor refute it.

"This is speculation until we receive the decision. What the Supreme Court has found we will know when we receive it in writing," he said, adding that if such reports were released, it was probably true.

Nobilo said that if the Supreme Court reduced Polancec's sentenced to under a year's imprisonment, it meant the legal requirements had been changed because the crime of which Polancec was convicted carried a prison sentence of a minimum one year.

Polancec said he only knew what the media had stated and that he had not been notified.

The Zagreb County Court sentenced him in mid-October 2010 to 15 months' imprisonment and Miletic, an attorney from Vukovar, to 12 months. Under the sentence, they have to return to the state the amount of which they defrauded it and Miletic has been banned from practicing as an attorney for two years.

Polancec was accused of abuse of office and enabling Miletic to make considerable illegal gain.

During trial, Polancec denied all the charges, claiming he had been working for the benefit of the state and at the urging of former PM Ivo Sanader, who he said had requested that an "important political issue be (solved) with as little money as possible."

Polancec said he had paid Miletic HRK 500,000 as compensation for earnings he had lost when disgruntled Serb workers of the Borovo company in Vukovar had dropped lawsuits filed because they had not been paid severance packages and their years of service during the Serbian occupation of the eastern Croatian town had not been computed.