After the indictment was read out, USKOK attorney Tamara Laptos said that testimonies by 115 USKOK witnesses, extensive documentation and testimonies by expert witnesses specialising in accounting and financial matters would prove that Polancec conspired with the other accused so that they could together buy Podravka shares with the company's money, thus defrauding it of HRK 400 million.

She said that the accused, contrary to their publicly proclaimed and prepared privatisation programme for Podravka, that was to have been carried out through the employee stock ownership plan, had started to implement a plan for the illegal takeover of the company, with Polancec allegedly being the mastermind of the operation.

The accused allegedly planned to take over 75 percent plus one share of Podravka in several steps, each of which was defined and described in detail. Laptos said that evidence of this was found in the notes of the accused. One of the steps was the purchase of 26 percent of Podravka shares owned by the state. USKOK claims that as Deputy Prime Minister in charge of the economy and chairman of the Croatian Privatisation Fund (HFP) Steering Board at the time relevant to the indictment, Polancec could have influence on the sale of the 26-percent stake.

Laptos said a large portion of the documents was not found in Podravka but with the accused, who she said had tried to hide them. She added that they had established two companies in Malta and one in the Virgin Islands which were to have become owners of the purchased stakes.

She said there was no evidence whatsoever to support the theory of the defence that the accused had protected the company from a hostile takeover by the Norwegian company Rieber & Son. She said that no one in Podravka's management, supervisory board or shareholders' assembly had known anything about this, and that the Norwegian company had informed Podravka's management, as well as the Croatian government, about its plan to buy Podravka shares.

Anto Nobilo, defence attorney for the accused Damir Polancec, dismissed as absurd the prosecution's conspiracy allegation, saying that the accused had never met or been in the same place at the same time in five years. Nobilo said that it was only in court that his client met the indicted owner and director of the SMS company from Split, Srdjan Mladinic, when the scandal broke out. He added that the accused co-owner of the Varazdin-based company Fima Grupa, Milan Horvat, had very few opportunities to meet with Polancec.

Nobilo denied that Polancec could have managed state-owned shares in Podravka as those shares were owned by the Croatian Health Insurance Agency and other funds. He said that he would prove that Polancec did not have in his possession a single document that was now in the case file, nor was any mail found in his computer that would indicate his criminal involvement.

"If the goal was to take over the majority interest in Podravka, how come Polancec was simultaneously selling his shares," Nobilo asked, adding that there was no plan whatsoever to buy a majority stake in Podravka.

Defence teams for the other accused, too, said that there had been no plan by their clients to acquire a majority stake in Podravka, but that rather they tried to defend the company from a hostile takeover.

The indictment in this case has around 350 pages and the case file contains almost 42,000 pages and is one of the biggest in the history of the Croatian judiciary. All parties to the proceedings face a long trial, one of the reasons being the fact that around 150 witnesses were approved for questioning.

Apart from Polancec, the accused in the case are former Podravka executives Darko Marinac, Zdravko Sestak, Josip Pavlovic and Sasa Romac, manager of the SMS company Srdjan Mladinic, Fima Grupa co-owner Milan Horvat and lawyer Zoran Markovic.

The trial is scheduled to resume on June 13 with the reading of the documentation.