Former Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader denied on Wednesday that he had interceded with the Croatian National Bank in 2007 regarding the sale of the Hypo-Group Alpe Adria bank to the Bavarian bank Bayern LB, Austrian news agency APA said.
Sanader made the statement while being questioned by the Carinthian parliamentary commission investigating the Hypo Bank case.
The former Croatian PM was arrested near Salzburg on December 10 on an international arrest warrant issued by Croatia where he is wanted in connection with a corruption investigation. He is in custody in Salzburg and was questioned via video link from Klagenfurt.
Sanader confirmed that the then Prime Minister of Bavaria, Edmund Stoiber, had asked him in a telephone conversation to use his influence with the Croatian central bank. Sanader added that he had told Stoiber that the Croatian National Bank (HNB) was independent and that he could not influence its decisions.
The chairman of the inquiry commission, Greens member of the Carinthian Parliament Rolf Holub, then showed Sanader a statement by HNB Governor Zeljko Rohatinski. Holub said he had personally obtained the statement from Rohatinski.
According to that statement, Sanader told Rohatinski that it would be in Croatia's national interests if he did not oppose the sale.
Sanader told the commission he did not remember saying that. He said he had mentioned the Hypo bank to Rohatinski once, asking him "how it looked".
"Bad," Rohatinski reportedly told Sanader, adding that things could possibly work if he set higher demands on the Bavarians.
Sanader told the commission he could not see a connection between the sale of the Hypo bank to Bayern LB and the fact that Stoiber had presented him with a Bavarian medal. He said that as far as he could recall there had been no interventions on the Austrian part regarding the sale of the Hypo bank and that he had had no contacts with Carinthian politicians.
Sanader said he had never met the late Carinthian leader Joerg Haider. He said he had not dealt with the development of the Hypo bank, and that he had met the bank's former board members Wolfgang Kulterer and Guenter Striedinger, but that he did not know them well.
Sanader resolutely dismissed claims that he had received kickbacks and that he had helped Croatian companies obtain loans from the Hypo bank.
Sanader said that the Croatian Foreign Ministry was granted a loan of some 140 million Austrian schillings by the Hypo bank in 1995 when he served as a deputy foreign minister, and that the loan was used for the development of the diplomatic service and the purchase of embassy buildings.
