ZAGREB, April 5, 2019 – Former prime minister and HDZ party leader Ivo Sanader was taken by police on Thursday afternoon to Zagreb’s Remetinec prison after earlier in the day the Supreme Court increased his sentence in a case in which he was charged with corruption and the Zagreb County Court issued a warrant for police to take him into custody.
While waiting for police to take him to prison Sanader told reporters that all this was “a show and a politically rigged trial.”
“There is no evidence. This is ridiculous, the verdict should have been quashed. This is yet another show. My lawyers are here, if police come for me, I will go… I’m ready for anything and will prove my innocence,” Sanader said, adding that during the trial former regional development minister Petar Čobanković read his answers from a notebook in agreement with the prosecution.
Sanader’s lawyer Jadranka Sloković said that they had learned of the Supreme Court’s decision from the media.
The Zagreb County Court earlier in the day confirmed that it had issued a warrant that Sanader be taken into custody after the Supreme Court increased his sentence in a case dubbed “Planinska” to more than five years.
The Supreme Court today completed its three-day deliberation on appeals against the trial court ruling in this case, in which Sanader was sentenced to four and a half years in prison and ordered to pay back 15 million kuna.
According to unofficial information, the Supreme Court has increased his sentence to six years.
Apart from the former prime minister, the trial chamber in this case also convicted Mladen Mlinarević, for whom it established that he inflated the value of a building in Zagreb’s Planinska Street owned by former HDZ MP and businessman Stjepan Fiolić, from whom the regional development ministry, led by former minister Petar Čobanković, purchased the property in 2009.
Čobanković made a plea bargain with the prosecution before the trial and was sentenced to one year in prison. He did not go to prison but did community service.
Mlinarević and Fiolić were each sentenced to one year’s conditional imprisonment, which was later replaced with community service.
Fiolić admitted that he helped Sanader with the sale of the property based on a forged appraisal and that he brought 10 million kuna and another one million euros (approx. 17 million kuna in total) to Sanader’s home in a cardboard box.
More news about Ivo Sanader can be found in the Politics section.
