"I entirely deny that I committed the crimes, I do not feel guilty," Rojs said in a retrial which began today.
The first trial case against him was led by another panel of judges since February 2004. He was accused alongside Stjepan Spajic, who charged with inciting Rojs in 1998, when Rojs was assistant defence minister and chief of the ministry's management sector, to write off three million kuna owed by Spajic's soccer club Hrvatski Dragovoljac.
The trial was in the final stage when Spajic died and the case had to be retried in front of a new panel of judges.
Apart from the said write-off, the indictment charges Rojs with ordering, without authorisation, the provision of 2.3 million kuna in cigarettes, coffee and other consumer goods to the 66th road regiment, which was not part of the Croatian Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defence.
Rojs is also charged with authorising the provision of services in ministry-owned restaurants and hotels to a number of soccer teams when they guested in Zagreb without compensation, an amount totalling 200,000 kuna.
As in the first trial, the witnesses will be former defence ministers Andrija Hebrang, Pavao Miljavac and Jozo Rados as well ex-prime minister Zlatko Matesa.
Rojs said the court hall he had sued the state, claiming 545 million kuna for the 66th regiment. "If that regiment did not exist, then neither do the roads that it built," he told the press.
(EUR1 = 7.33)