"I resolutely deny that I organised any gang. That was the furthest thing from my mind," Matekovic told the Zagreb County Court on Monday. He admitted he was guilty of the abduction of Vladimir Zagorec's son, but not as stated in the indictment by the Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organised Crime.
Matekovic said he had decided to kidnap his former business associate's son after a conversation with Novica Petrac, already sentenced for the kidnapping. According to Matekovic, Novica Petrac said that Zagorec should be "relieved of one or two million euros" and that he would not even feel it given "how much money he stole". Matekovic added they were convinced that Zagorec would not go to the police about the abduction.
Matekovic corroborated what Novica already told the court about his father Hrvoje Petrac, namely that he had not been involved in the kidnapping. Matekovic said he had mentioned Hrvoje Petrac's name to their accomplices, in agreement with Novica, only as proof that they were serious about the abduction. He claimed that Hrvoje Petrac had had no idea of this.
Matekovic said he and Zagorec had been together in a number of ventures since 2000. He said Zagorec had always been a silent partner and that his cut was in the name of Mario Pleic.
Matekovic dismissed Zagorec's claims that he and his brother had been behind an assault on Zagorec in a parking building in downtown Zagreb, claiming that Zagorec had offered him 100,000 euros to find the perpetrators.
Prior to Matekovic's testimony, the panel of judges rejected a request by Hrvoje Petrac's defence that audio recordings of phone conversations which the police secretly taped at the time of the kidnapping be struck from the records.
The defence claims that the police deliberately left out all conversations between Zagorec and Petrac, and that the Interior Ministry, after being requested to submit all the tapes, claimed that they had sent everything they had.
The Ministry said in a note today that the tapes were faulty due technical problems, accusing the phone operators.
The trial resumes on Tuesday.