"The government should be held politically accountable for crime in a state institution in which four ministers sit on the steering committee," he said in the wake of the arrest of eight senior HFP officials suspected of taking one million euros in bribes.
Milanovic said that by claiming that the Maestro arrest operation was a success for the government, Sanader was trying to assure the public that the government was combating corruption although he had not even known about the operation.
Milanovic congratulated and commended the State Prosecutor's Office and the Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organised Crime for "the first serious and successfully carried out anti-corruption operation".
He went on to say that if Sanader and President Stjepan Mesic had known about the operation, they should state how they knew.
He said the SDP was not against the People's Party's (HNS) initiative to have the government resign, but added that voters would change the government at elections in November.
Milanovic said that no SDP official was either politically or criminally responsible in the HFP case.
He went on to say that the situation in the HFP was best reflected in HFP president Grga Ivezic's claim that he had no idea what was going on, and added that Sanader's announcement that the HFP would be dissolved was irrelevant.
Asked to comment on ex-Slovene PM Anton Rop's claim that incumbent PM Janez Jansa and Sanader had been agreeing border incidents in Piran Bay, Milanovic said this was a surprising statement from a person in such a position and that one should wait until the case was investigated.
Istrian Democratic Party (IDS) vice president Damir Kajin told the press in Pula that Maestro was a good way to audit ownership transformation and privatisation and return part of the unlawfully acquired property to the state portfolio.
The IDS maintains that all governments are responsible for the latest corruption scandal and the situation in the HFP and not just the incumbent ministers and Steering Committee members, he said, applauding Mesic's statement that every privatisation carried out since the HFP's establishment should be looked into.
Kajin also said that it would be a real miracle if the HDZ won another term in office following the Maestro arrests and allegations that Transport Minister Bozidar Kalmeta's driver was implicated in extortion.
Commenting on Rop's statement, he said that if Sanader and Jansa had been agreeing border incidents, the residents of the northern Adriatic Istria County were "the victims of an agreed nationalist Croatian-Slovene policy".