Citing a Liechtenstein court ruling of September 1, the newspaper said that AAP had consciously "overfunded" Zagorec's real estate transactions, approving loans that considerably exceeded the agreed amounts for such transactions, and that Zagorec retained the extra money.

Zagorec's lawyer Elisabeth Rech dismissed those allegations as "untrue".

Der Standard said that Hypo bankers consciously approved higher loans to Zagorec, from which he profited.

According to AAP, Zagorec owes the bank 71.852 million euros in unpaid loans.

One of the AAP executives said in April 2007, as quoted in a court file, that the bank was aware that Zagorec was withdrawing the extra money in cash and depositing it in his own firms.

Der Standard went on to say that investigators were also looking into payments to former Croatian foreign minister Mate Granic, who provided consulting and lobbying services to the Hypo bank.

Granic was reportedly paid 200,000 euros for his services, which amount was paid from an account of the Monarola firm in Vaduz into the Swiss account of Granic's associate identified as Natasa M.

Granic told Der Standard that he had worked "politically and economically" for the Zagreb branch of the Hypo bank from 2005 to 2008, and that he advised Hypo International in 2007 and 2009 on the bank's regional expansion.