Former Hypo Bank management board chair Wolfgang Kulterer on Wednesday failed to show up before Zagreb County Court, where he was expected to testify at the trial of former Croatian Prime Minister and former president of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) Ivo Sanader.
A member of the Panel of Judges, Ivana Krsul, briefly stated that Kulterer did not show up in court today due to health problems.
Sanader, who insists that the charges against him are false, is accused by the anti-corruption agency USKOK of receiving a HRK 3.6 million commission from the Austrian bank after the bank approved a loan in the amount of 140 million Austrian schillings to the Croatian foreign ministry in the mid-1990s, which is why he has been charged with war profiteering because at the time, Croatia was still in a state of war. The loan was intended for the purchase of embassy buildings.
Kulterer told the Zagreb County Court last week that Ivo Sanader had joined negotiations about the possibility for that bank to grant a loan to Croatia towards the end of the process and the kickbacks were paid out to a man named Eugen Laxa. Today he was scheduled to be questioned by the defence, the court and Sanader.
Sanader is accused of receiving 10 million euros in bribes to enable MOL to have a dominant position in INA and to see to it that INA's loss-making gas business is divested. The owner of the petrochemical company Dioki and the Rijeka-based Novi List daily, Robert Jezic, is expected to testify about these charges on Thursday. Jezic, who used to be one of Sanader's closest friends, is now a key witness in the trial against the former state official.
During the investigation, Jezic said that a portion of the MOL bribe to Sanader was paid out through his Swiss-based companies, but Sanader's lawyers stressed on several occasions that by accusing Sanader Jezic wanted to improve his own status in a number of other investigations against him.
