ZAGREB, April 12, 2019 – Robert Ježić, the USKOK anti-corruption office’s key witness against former prime minister and HDZ president Ivo Sanader in the INA-MOL case, said on Thursday he paid 250,000 euro in 2010 for Sanader’s travel expenses at his request as well as the rental of a flat and office space in New York for Sanader’s daughter’s then boyfriend.
“We entered that expense as expenses for the project of opening our office in New York. The bills were paid by my company ABC Holding, the same company used to buy a bullet-proof BMW for the HDZ,” Ježić told the Zagreb County Court, adding that he had documents proving that and that he would submit them at the next hearing.
Ježić said he also paid for many expensive lunches and dinners. Asked why he did not mention this earlier, he said nobody asked him.
Speaking of previously unknown aspects of expense payments, he said that “according to the interrogations so far, it seems that Sanader didn’t get anything.” “Well, I didn’t get anything,” Sanader responded, prompting Ježić to ask him, “Then who did?”
The new information on the payment of Sanader’s expenses came up after Ježić answered questions by William Boyce, defence counsel for Zsolt Hernadi, CEO of Hungary’s MOL energy group. Boyce asked Ježić about the payment of a bribe so that MOL could obtain controlling rights in its Croatian peer INA.
The former prime minister is on trial for taking and Hernadi for giving said 10 million euro bribe via a company owned by Ježić. Hernadi is unavailable to Croatian authorities. This retrial began on 23 October 2018, when Sanader dismissed all the charges, just as he did in the first trial, when Hernadi was not a defendant yet.
Aside from the bribe, USKOK accused Sanader and Hernadi or arranging the divestiture of INA’s unprofitable gas business. USKOK demands that the former prime minister, if convicted, pay 10 million euro into the state budget.
More news about the former prime minister can be found in the Politics section.
