What with the global coronavirus pandemic, the threat of economic collapse and the need to reassess the way in which we live our lives, from our basic social interactions to the way we work, you’ve probably forgotten all about former Agrokor boss Ivica Todoric and his own role in the almost-destruction of the domestic economy.
Yes, Ivica Todoric is still around. He hasn’t been forgotten about. His former lawyers, the well known Jadranka Slokovic and Cedo Prodanovic, who famously defended him in front of the British court in London, have stepped down from their positions in Todoric’s regard, and now he has someone new fighting his corner…
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 6th of May, 2020, from next week, all of Croatia’s legal ”elite” will return to the scene, as will the many active lawsuits. From Ivo Sanader and Marina Lovric Merzel through to Nadan Vidosevic and, well… the list goes on and on and I’d be here for most of the day if I were to list all of these names. One of the more high-profile trials that will be found in court is the case of the former Agrokor boss Ivica Todoric.
RTL has discovered that Todoric’s new lawyer is no less than Croatia’s former USKOK chief Zeljko Zganjer. The other is Ljiljana Planinic. For those unfamiliar with USKOK, this institution is a body of the Croatian criminal justice system: The Croatian State Prosecutor’s Office for the Suppression of Organised Crime and Corruption/Ured za suzbijanje korupcije i organiziranog kriminaliteta).
“Yesterday, I received a notification that I had been appointed ex-officio defense counsel for Ivica Todoric. It’s a factually complex process,” said the former USKOK boss, and in reference to the now infamous case in which there are 100,000 pages of documents, he said:
“It will take me a long time. I need to sit down and try to study the whole thing,” he said. Regarding the difference between an ex-officio lawyer and the situation in which someone actually hires him as a lawyer, Zganjer said:
“There’s no essential difference. A lawyer must work conscientiously and correctly and with dedication in both cases,”
In regard to the situation with the coronavirus pandemic, but also the Zagreb earthquake, he said:
“It simply came to our notice then. We as lawyers must accept the schedule of hearings. And each of us will do our best to provide legal protection to the extent which is possible.”
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