The trial of former Deputy Prime Minister Damir Polancec and seven other defendants in a case dubbed "Spice" resumed before the Zagreb County Court on Monday with the presentation of extensive documentation in this 42,000-page case file, which has already been declared to be one of the largest files in the Croatian judiciary.
At the beginning of the trial last week, the defence team asked the court to read out every document which the anti-corruption agency USKOK has collected during the investigation into allegations that the eight defendants conspired to buy a majority stake in Podravka with the company's own money, defrauding that leading Croatian food producer of more than 400 million kuna (54 million euros).
The presiding judge, Sinisa Plese, accepted the proposal, explaining that he did not want any complaints about the course of the trial, which was why reading of documents began today.
Last Wednesday Polancec and seven other defendants entered pleas of not guilty.
Apart from Polancec, the accused in the case are: former executives of Podravka Darko Marinac, Zdravko Sestak, Josip Pavlovic and Sasa Romac, manager of the SMS company Srdjan Mladinic, co-owner of Fima Group Milan Horvat, and lawyer Zoran Markovic. Defence teams said that there had been no plan by their clients to acquire a majority stake in Podravka, but that rather they tried to defend the company from a hostile takeover.
After the presentation of the USKOK documentation, 115 witnesses proposed by USKOK and some 30 witnesses for the defence are to testify in this trial.
