Soljic's testimony focused on Monitor, a company established in 1995 by the government of the then Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosna.
Soljic said Monitor employed 2,500 demobbed members of Bosnia's Croat Defence Council (HVO) who later, as members of the Croatian Army's 66th engineering regiment, with the mediation of Croatian General Ljubo Cesic Rojs, took part in the building of roads and other facilities throughout Croatia from 1996 to 2000.
Soljic said there was a Croatian Defence Ministry document stating that those works were worth about 820 million kuna, but that the workers were paid only half that amount.
The witness said that Monitor's first director, in 1995, was Jelavic, and that in 1996 Jelavic became a member of the company's management board, which was chaired by Soljic. He added that Rojs became a member of the board in 1998.
Soljic said that Croatia's ex-defence minister, the late Gojko Susak, "decided about everything. He had the last word". He added that Susak directed Monitor's business through Rojs and that at Susak's initiative Monitor became the biggest stockholder in Hercegovacka Banka. The indictment charges Jelavic with embezzling funds through the bank.
Asked by prosecutor John McNair why in 1997 and 1998, when Jelavic was the Bosnian Federation defence minister, Croatia sent money to Monitor through the Bosnian Federation Defence Ministry and not directly to the company, Soljic said he would like to know this himself.
Asked by McNair if the HVO served to launder money between Croatia and Bosnia, Soljic answered in the negative. He also denied the prosecutor's claim that his family was given a car when he was Monitor's chairman of the board.
Asked by McNair if he, Jelavic and others like them had transformed the Bosnian Federation Ministry into an automatic bank teller and helped launder money Croatia was sending as assistance to Croats in Bosnia, the witness said that such questions offended him, to which the prosecutor replied that the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina was offended.
The trial resumes on Thursday.