Defendant Ivo Sanader on Thursday objected to the testimony of INA Supervisory Board chairman Davor Stern, who claimed that the 2009 amendments to the INA shareholders' agreement, endorsed by the cabinet led by Sanader when he was Prime Minister, paved the way for the loss of Croatia's influence over the national oil and gas company.
Sanader, the former PM charged with allegedly taking 10 million euros in reward for enabling Hungary's MOL to have a dominant position in INA through the 2009 amendment of the shareholders' agreement, contested Stern's claim that in the event that INA had sold its loss-making gas business, the state would have lost up to 1.5 billion kuna annually.
"The intention of his testimony is to show that the amendments to the shareholders' agreement brought the Croatian side into a position in which it has no say in INA," Sanader said after Stern testified before the Zagreb County Court.
He accused the witness of deliberately ignoring the fact that MOL had already attained a controlling interest in INA.
Sanader's trial was briefly interrupted because of a tip about a bomb in the courthouse which proved to be a hoax.
