Ivo Sanader has dismissed allegations that he stepped down as prime minister due to threats from organised crime to his family's members.
"That's a fabrication," Sanader said on Thursday during a break in his trial on corruption charges before the Zagreb County Court.
The former premier, who abruptly resigned in the summer of 2009, denied allegations from an e-mail of the U.S. private global intelligence company Stratfor, which was released by WikiLeaks.
According to WikiLeaks, Sanader resigned following threats to his family from underworld figures with whom he was allegedly connected. He was asked to withdraw from political life or they would start killing members of his family.
"This is a hoax just as was the cable with Angela Merkel," Sanader said alluding to previous speculations that the German chancellor had pressured him into resigning.
He said today that such things did not exist in international political affairs and reiterated that he had decided to step down as prime minister because of Slovenia's blockade of Croatia's European Union accession negotiations.
Sanader also denied the witness testimony of his former deputy Damir Polancec that he had ordered his former deputy Jadranka Kosor to sell the shares of the INA oil company held by the the Veterans' Fund, whose president she was at the time.
