The former executive of Austrian Hypo Bank in charge of operations with Croatia, Gunther Striedinger, told the Zagreb County Court on Thursday that the terms and conditions of a loan to Croatia in the mid-1990s had been negotiated by the bank's CEO Wolfgang Kulterer and the then Croatian Deputy Foreign Minister Ivo Sanader.
Kulterer did not show up in court on Thursday to testify in the trial of former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, who is charged with receiving 3.6 million kuna in kickbacks from Hypo Bank to facilitate a loan to Croatia for the purchase of buildings for diplomatic missions. Sanader is also accused of taking 10 million euros in bribes from Hungarian oil and gas group MOL to secure it a dominant position in Croatia's INA.
When asked by the prosecutor to explain how Hypo Bank had begun operating in Croatia, Striedinger said that the bank had contacted the then Austrian Foreign Minister Alois Mock, who in turn contacted Sanader.
Striedinger said that he had once seen Sanader and his wife Mirjana in a car park near his office outside Klagenfurt, adding that they had exchanged a few words out of courtesy, but he had not asked Sanader what he was doing there. The witness said he had not seen Sanader receive an envelope, as stated last week by the former director of Hypo Leasing Croatia, Drago Vidakovic, who said that he had seen Kulterer give Sanader an envelope in the car park of the Hypo Bank building in Klagenfurt in early 1995.
Striedinger said that with time Kulterer had started to boast about becoming good friends with Sanader. He said that Vidakovic would meet him and Kulterer at Zagreb airport and that meetings with Sanader had taken place in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The witness claimed that those meetings focused more on the political situation in Croatian than on details of the loan itself.
Striedinger said that their hosts had reassured them that the loan would not be risky, and Kulterer had instructed him to compile a record of those meetings. He said that the loan had been negotiated by Kulterer and Sanader, and that he had not discussed the terms and conditions of the loan because that was the responsibility of the bank's management. He also said that two or three times Croatian Foreign Minister Mate Granic had also been present at their meetings with Sanader.
Striedinger said that in the bank's hierarchy he had been one level below Kulterer.
Kulterer excused himself from attending today's hearing, saying he had received the court summons on short notice, namely on December 13, and could not come to Zagreb. He suggested being heard via video link.
Judge Ivan Turudic said that this was the second summons to which Kulterer had failed to respond and that he would decide on his suggestion at a later date.
