Apart from standing trial for war profiteering in a case involving the Austrian Hypo bank, Croatia's former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader will on Thursday face charges, in the same trial, of taking 10 million euros in bribes for helping the Hungarian oil company MOL acquire management rights in the Croatian oil company INA, Zagreb County Court confirmed on Tuesday.
The decision to join the two trials was made by a Zagreb County Court panel of judges at the request of the anti-corruption investigative agency USKOK, which cited efficiency.
Sanader's defence said previously that it would not oppose a joinder of proceedings against their client, noting that the two cases should have been conducted together from the outset.
Court officials said the joined proceedings would continue before the panel of judges presided over by Ivan Turudic according to a previously set schedule, on November 10.
On that date, the trial will start anew for reasons of procedure with the reading of USKOK's indictment, in which the second count will be charges of taking bribes from MOL executives. The indictment will retain as its first count the charge of war profiteering, namely the taking of 3.6 million kuna in kickbacks from the Hypo bank for a loan the bank granted to Croatia in the mid-1990s.
The ex-prime minister will be asked again to enter his plea. At the start of the trial last week, he dismissed all charges against him as fabrications.
The indictment in the INA-MOL case, which was upheld on Monday, alleges that aside from transferring management rights in INA to MOL, Sanader was to have negotiated, for a bribe of 10 million euros, the divestiture of INA's loss making gas business, which was to be taken over by the Croatian state. The prosecutors have moved that Sanader, if found guilty and convicted, should return the 10 million euros to the state.
