Top Croatian court overturns ex-PM's jail term for graft

Croatia's Supreme Court has overturned a nine-year prison sentence and ordered a retrial for former prime minister Ivo Sanader, who was jailed for embezzling millions of euros in public funds, a spokesman said Thursday.

The verdict was scrapped due to "violations of criminal proceedings, notably the right to a fair trial", the Zagreb court spokesman Kresimir Devcic told AFP, after a three-day session on the case.

The former premier was set to be released from a Zagreb prison on 12.4 million kuna (1.6 million euro, $1.8 million) bail, Devcic said.

The initial trial was one of Croatia's most important corruption cases since the former Yugoslav republic's 1991 independence. It was also the first of its kind against a Croatian political party --and one of several involving Sanader.

It resulted in him being convicted to nine years in jail in March last year for diverting some ten million euros from state-run firms mainly to benefit himself and to go towards slush funds for his former HDZ party.

The party as a whole, as well as three of its senior officials, were tried alongside Sanader and found guilty of being involved in the scheme.

The case is one in a series against the once powerful 62-year-old, who was premier from 2003 to 2009 and helped guide Croatia to NATO membership.

In 2012, Sanader was sentenced to 10 years in prison for receiving millions of euros in a bribe from Hungarian energy group MOL while he was premier.

- Convictions quashed -

He was also convicted for accepting a bribe from an Austrian bank during Croatia's independence war, when he was deputy foreign minister, for which he was accused of "war profiteering".

Last year the Supreme Court cut his sentence to eight and half years.

The convictions were then abolished in July by Croatia's constitutional court. The tribunal concluded that Sanader's right to a fair trial had been violated and ordered a retrial which has yet to open.

In 2010 Sanader was expelled from HDZ, which has been trying to paint him as a lone black sheep.

In a statement on Thursday, the party hailed the Supreme Court's ruling saying it "removes the stigma from the party and collective responsibility of its 220,000 members".

The Supreme Court's decision comes just weeks ahead of parliamentary elections, due by the end of November.

Sanader could be released next week once procedures are completed, his defence attorney Jadranka Slokovic told reporters.

He has also been charged with abuse of power and corruption in two more cases that include a building sale in 2009 and the sale of electricity from Croatia to a Bosnian company at lower than market prices.

The fight against corruption was a key requisite for Croatia's accession in 2013 to the European Union.

Source: AFP