Today, the panel of judges refused the request by the defence teams that evidence which they described as unlawful be removed from the case file.
The file in this case, dubbed "Spice", consists of over 40,000 pages.
Apart from Polancec, the other seven accused in the case are former Podravka executives Darko Marinac, Zdravko Sestak, Josip Pavlovic and Sasa Romac; the owner and manager of the SMS company from Split, Srdjan Mladinic; a co-owner of the Fima Grupa company from Varazdin, Milan Horvat; and attorney Zoran Markovic.
They are charged with conspiracy to commit crime, abuse of power, incitement of abuse of powers, and illegal brokerage.
The defence, among other things, requested that the financial expert evaluation on which the indictment is based be thrown out. Defence lawyers also hold that USKOK has breached the defendants' rights and that USKOK should not have been involved in investigating the alleged irregularities in Podravka before the investigation implicated Polancec.