"I will exercise my right to remain silent," Pavosevic told the panel of judges presided over by Ivana Calic after she summoned the accused to present her defence.

The court then began examining recordings of her interviews with investigators from the national anti-corruption office USKOK and reading her statements, which showed that some of the money the HDZ had received in donations was not registered in books and had been spent, among other things, on election campaigns.

Pavosevic told the investigators she had paid out money from the slush fund to several party and government employees, including former minister Bianca Matkovic and former government spokesman Ratko Macek. The largest monthly fee of 10,000 kuna (1,300 euros) was paid, on the orders of former prime minister Ivo Sanader, to the then health minister Darko Milinovic.

The accused backed up her statements by presenting copies of payment slips and a notebook with her personal records of payments, which she had buried in her garden before her arrest.

Pavosevic, former HDZ treasurer Mladen Barisic, the owner of the Fimi Media marketing agency Nevenka Jurak, and the legal representative of Fimi Media as a legal entity, Marica Ivankovic, pleaded guilty to the charge that they had siphoned some 70 million kuna (9.3 million euros) from state companies and institutions into the HDZ's slush fund via Fimi Media, after which this case was named, while Sanader, Macek and the legal representative of the HDZ denied the charge, saying that the slush fund had been created without the knowledge of the party's leadership.