The Zagreb County Court on Friday sentenced former Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister Damir Polancec to 15 months in prison pending appeal for paying Vukovar attorney Petar Miletic half a million kuna of budget funds for an unnecessary expert study.
The panel of judges, presided over by Judge Ivan Turudic, sentenced Miletic to one year in prison pending appeal, ordering that he and Polancec pay back the amount in question.
Miletic was also banned from practicing law for a period of two years from the date his sentence becomes final.
Leaving the court, Polancec said only that today's decision had been made earlier at a different place.
The anti-corruption office USKOK had charged Polancec with abuse of powers and with making it possible for Miletic to obtain considerable personal gain.
During the trial, Polancec dismissed all charges, saying that he had worked in the interest of the state and followed instructions from former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, who he said had requested settling "an important political issue with as little money as possible".
Polancec said that he had not worked in the interest of Miletic, whom he paid half a million kuna of budget money as compensation for the fee Miletic lost when the Serb workers of the Borovo footwear company from Vukovar gave up their lawsuits against the state, which they had filed because unlike the company's Croat workers, they had not received severance pay nor had their years of service during the occupation of Vukovar been recognised.
Miletic, however, told the court today that the expert study was not fictitious but "real and useful", and that he had made it conscientiously, even though it only had 19 pages.
This was the first trial of former Deputy PM Polancec against whom USKOK has pressed charges in three cases. The ruling was made in less than a month.
Polancec is also indicted for misappropriating budget funds amounting to 230,000 kuna to install lighting on a soccer field in his home town of Djelekovec, as well as for a HRK 400 million fraud in the Podravka food company case.
An investigation is under way in the case of the power company HEP, with Polancec suspected, along with former HEP director Ivan Mravak and the former CEO of the Sibenik Light Metal Factory (TLM), Ivan Kostan, of defrauding HEP of some HRK 600 million.
