Continuing his testimony before the Zagreb County Court at the trial of Ivo Sanader on corruption charges, former Foreign Minister Mate Granic said on Thursday that he did not know whether the Austrian Hypo Bank had paid any commission to anyone after it had approved a loan to Croatia for the purchase of embassy residencies in the mid-1990s.
Ivo Sanader, a former deputy foreign minister and a former prime minister, is charged with having received HRK 3.6 million kuna for the loan agreement with the Hypo bank when he was Granic's deputy. Sanader was indicted of war profiteering.
Granic, who began testifying last week, told the court today that Sanader had conducted all talks on the loan with that Austrian bank, which was the first foreign bank to enter the Croatian market in wartime.
The witness added that the claims by the defence team, that Granic himself could have received kickbacks, prompted him to concentrate on the details surrounding the conclusion of the loan agreement with Hypo.
Granic recalled that Sanader had mentioned to him the name of a distinguished expatriate who was recommended by the then Croatian President Franjo Tudjman as somebody who could facilitate the negotiations on the loan. However, after some 15 days, Sanader again mentioned that expatriate and added that he had requested money for his services, which Granic dismissed as something out of the question, with which Sanader agreed, according to the witness.
"I can't remember him (Sanader) telling me then the name of that man, but now I know that his name was Eugen Laxa," Granic told the court.
The Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organised Crime (USKOK), that is prosecuting Sanader, claims that in 1995 Hypo paid millions in commission in Laxa's name. Laxa's name is alleged to have been on the payout slips which Sanader received. The prosecutors claim that a graphological evaluation established that the signatures on those slips were not Laxa's, who has died in the meantime.
Granic today testified that the loan given to Croatia for the purchase of embassy buildings with an interest rate of 8.5 percent was more favourable than loans with higher interest rates offered by domestic banks.
Sanader is on trial for allegedly taking a 3.6 million kuna commission from the Hypo bank to facilitate the granting of a loan to Croatia. He is also charged with receiving 10 million euros in bribes from the Hungarian oil company MOL when he was Prime Minister to help it secure a dominant position in Croatia's INA.
