During an hours-long speech before a panel of judges of the Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Prosecutor McNair said that in his capacity as the Defence Minister of the Croat-Muslim entity in 1997 and 1998 the accused had abused his office so as to acquire more personal wealth.
While he was the federal defence minister, Jelavic was not far from spending about one billion kuna annually, which were funds that Croatia sent to Bosnia-Herzegovina, McNair said.
According to the prosecutor, Jelavic directed those funds to Herzegovina's Franciscan province and to several companies so as to enable them to buy shares of the Hercegovacka Bank with that money, which McNair labelled as unlawful.
He also pointed the finger at the "Jambo Metkovic" company as an obvious example of manipulation of funds sent to Mostar from Croatia. The said company got more money than it should have got according to the real volume of business, and, in return, it delivered food items and luxury cars to Mostar, McNair said.
Jelavic established a system in which the Croat component in the Bosnian defence ministry functioned as a government inside the federal government, he said, adding that this trial illustrated corruption of senior state officials in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The prosecutor went on to say that funds sent from Croatia were mixed with funds allocated from the budget of the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina for easier manipulation in order to cover up the identity of the money.
Jelavic's lawyer Dragan Barbaric will present his closing arguments on Tuesday.