The Supreme Court has quashed a guilty verdict which the Zagreb County Court ruled in the case of a former Croatian People's Party (HNS) member of Parliament and his business partner Petar Turkovic, convicted of the illegally obtaining more than HRK 9.5 million by selling land owned by the city of Zagreb. The Croatian Supreme Court ordered the retrial of Ferencak and Turkovic, whom the lower-instance court sentenced each to one year in prison pending appeal.
In 1996, Ferencak, president of the Croatian Nanbudo Institute, and Turkovic, the institute's manager, bought from the City of Zagreb, under favourable terms, land intended for the construction of a centre for disabled people, only to sell it several years later to the Konzum retail chain at a price of HRK 10.6 million, several times higher than the original purchase price.
During the trial the accused men denied the charges, claiming that the money invested in the project was their own and that they had not defrauded anyone.
The Supreme Court accepted the appeal of the convicts regarding their complaint about erroneous conclusion about the facts. The Supreme Court holds that the convicts successfully challenged the established level of unlawful gain of 9.6 million. Ferencak and Turkovic were previously ordered to return HRK 4.8 million each,
The nonfinal guilty verdict was the reason why Ferencak, although nominated to sit in then JANAF oil pipeline operator's supervisory board, did not become a member of that supervisory board.
