The Constitutional Court has quashed a decision remanding former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader in investigative custody, returning the matter to the Zagreb County Court for reconsideration, the county court's spokesman, Kresimir Devcic, said on Tuesday evening.
He said the County Court received the Constitutional Court's decision today but he did not see it, so he would not comment on it or say why the Constitutional Court quashed his decision to remand Sanader in custody.
Devcic, the investigating judge in the Fimi Media case, for which Sanader has been remanded in custody, said he would decide on Sanader's investigative custody, as requested by the Constitutional Court, in the next few days.
Goran Suic, one of Sanader's attorneys, said the defence had still not received the Constitutional Court's decision.
He told press that before a final decision on possible release from prison was made, bail and some other details had to be arranged.
The last time Devcic remanded Sanader in custody, at the recommendation of the anti-corruption office USKOK, was on October 17, when he rejected the highest bail offered in the history of the Croatian judiciary, HRK 12.4 million, which consisted of lien offered by the then Parliament Speaker Luka Bebic, Sanader's friends and former party colleagues Mario Zubovic and Jerko Rosin, and his wife Mirjana.
Devcic explained his decision at the time by saying that proceedings against Sanader were under way in a number of cases in which the total damage was estimated at more than HRK 100 million.
After a Zagreb County Court panel of judges dismissed their appeal against Devcic's decision, the defence filed a complaint with the Constitutional Court, which upheld it.
Sanader has been in custody since mid-July, when he was extradited from Austria.
The investigation into the syphoning of state funds via the Fimi Media advertising company began 18 months ago. Sanader is one of 19 suspects, as is his former party, the HDZ, as a legal person. A court injunction has been issued to ban the party from selling or mortgaging its building in downtown Zagreb so the state can collect damages if any illegal activities are proved.
Sanader has recently gone on trial at the Zagreb County Court for war profiteering in the Hypo bank case and for taking EUR 10 million in bribes to give the Hungarian oil company MOL the dominant position in Croatia's INA.
