Former Prime Minister and Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) president Ivo Sanader on Wednesday pleaded not guilty at the start of his trial in the Planinska case in which he is in the dock together with former HDZ parliamentarian Stjepan Fiolic, the owner of a meat-processing company, and Mladen Mlinarevic, whose company ensured a bloated value contract for the sale of a building owned by the Fiolic company to the regional development ministry in 2009.
The second defendant Stjepan Fiolic pleaded guilty at today's commencement of the trial before the Zagreb County Court.
The third defendant Milnarevic, whose company was hired to assess the value of Fiolic's building and was, according to the indictment, put the value at 79.9 million kuna, twice as much as the real value, before it was sold to the ministry, pleaded not guilty.
Petar Cobankovic, who was the regional minister at the time relevant for the indictment, reached a plea bargain in mid-March and was given a year-long prison sentence which he would serve as a community service.
After being arrested last April, Fiolic admitted to selling a building in Zagreb's Planinska street for a trumped up price claiming that he retained the money from the sale. However later he stated that he took around HRK 17 million to Sanader at the latter's request.
Since this case was made public, Sanader has been insisted that it is yet another example of politically-motivated trials against him.
The prosecution insists that through the bloated price of the building sold to the ministry, Sanader and other defendants involved in this case embezzled at least HRK 26.4 million from the state budget.
