The former prime minister and president of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party, Ivo Sanader, said on Friday he was ready for another trial, this time in the Fimi Media corruption case, and that he would prove that what has been happening to him in the last two years was "a big setup and absolutely a politically motivated trial."
Addressing reporters, whom he had mainly avoided before, Sanader said that he was entering the trial full of confidence because "I have the best defence team in Croatia and the best arguments."
Sanader was speaking to the press on his way out of the Zagreb County Court. He and his lawyers expressed their dissatisfaction with the testimonies of two Croatian members of the management board of the INA oil company who had said during their hearings on Thursday and Friday that the amendments to the shareholders' agreements which Sanader's government had signed with the Hungarian oil company MOL in 2009 had damaged Croatian interests.
Sanader said that the INA management board members Ivan Kresic and Davor Mayer were "planted witnesses" whose sole task was to procrastinate the trial.
On April 16, Sanader will go on trial in the Fimi Media case in which he stands accused, together with his former party and several party officials, of siphoning more than 70 million kuna from state institutions and companies into the HDZ's slush fund.
