A member of the supervisory board of the INA oil company, Damir Vandjelic, said in the trial in the INA-MOL case on Friday that since the amendment of INA's shareholders' agreement, agreed between the Hungarian oil company MOL and the government of former Croatian prime minister Ivo Sanader, Croatian representatives on the management board had no influence on INA's business transactions.
Testifying in the trial of former PM Sanader, who is charged with taking 10 million euros in bribes from MOL in exchange for transferring to the Hungarian company management rights in INA, Vandjelic said that following changes to the shareholders', INA's management board, which is comprised of three Croat and three Hungarian representatives, had no influence whatsoever on decision-making processes in INA, because all decisions were directly made by the board of executive directors.
Vandjelic said that an internal document called the list of decision making powers prevented board members from running the company. He said that Croat members had already requested amendments to the documents, but they had been outvoted.
The witness also said that Croat members of the supervisory board had warned the government about unfavourable conditions in the amended shareholders' agreement on several occasions, adding that the Economy Ministry had also been aware of the unfavourable agreement.
"Two key objectives - energy stability and market enlargement - clearly had not been fulfilled," said Vandjelic who was appointed to the INA supervisory board in late 2010 by the Jadranka Kosor cabinet.
INA's supervisory board had nine members - one is appointed by INA workers, three are appointed by the Croatian government and the rest are MOL representatives. The decisions in the body are adopted by a majority vote, the witness explained.
Last week, a Croatian member of oil company INA's management board, Ivan Kresic, testified at the Sanader trial and also said that Croatian government representatives had no influence on the decision making process in INA, adding that the company was run entirely by its strategic partner MOL.
Kresic thus back the testimony by Davor Mayer, another member of INA's management board who took the stand earlier last week. Both witnesses who testified last week said that the 2009 changes to the shareholders' agreement were not good for Croatia's interests.
Apart from bribery charges, Sanader is indicted in this case also for war profiteering, namely for taking a commission from the Austrian Hypo bank from which Croatia in the early 1990s took a loan for the purchase of embassy buildings.
