Croatian former PM Sanader on trial again on alleged corruption

Croatian Zagreb county court on Monday started to retry corruption charge against former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader over Fimi Media case.

During the hearing of the new trial, Sanader denied guilty, claiming the indictment was false and he would prove it.

In 2014, Zagreb county court preliminarily sentenced Sanader to nine years in prison for siphoning money from state institutions through Fimi Media marketing agency.

However, the Croatian Supreme Court last year quashed the preliminary verdict, arguing that procedural errors had deprived Sanader of fair treatment, and sent back to the Zagreb county court for retrial.

Sanader, who was the prime minister from 2004 to 2009, was accused in several corruption cases, but so far he has not been convicted in any of the cases.

Croatian Constitutional Court in 2015 quashed the final ruling against Sanader in two corruption convictions -- Hypo and INA-MOL cases -- for procedural errors and ordered for retrial.

Sanader was sentence eight years and six months in jail for allegedly taking a bribe from the Hungarian oil group MOL in 2008 to allow it to have a dominant position in Croatian state-own oil company INA, and also taking a bribe from Austria's Hypo Bank in 1994 and 1995, when he was vice foreign minister.

source : xinhua