"I have heard the news today and I am flabbergasted. Such nonsense and impudence," Zvonimir Krnjakovic said on Saturday, adding that the Osijek mill had never imported other companies' sugar, let alone repacked it for the export to the European Union.
The report will do huge damage to our company, and all of us in the mill are shocked, the company's management board chairman said adding that accusations could have far-reaching repercussions for the entire country. Therefore Krnjakovic intends to ask assistance from Croatian as well as international institutions.
Former CEO of the Osijek sugar mill, Miroslav Kos, who was at the helm of the company from 1990 to 2002 and who is also now employed in it, said that the mill had to respond quickly to accusations, as the report could damage the entire national production of sugar.
"The news is silly, tendentious and absolutely incorrect," Kos said. adding that "some lobbies do not like to see that the sugar production and its export are going all right in Croatia".
TV FBIH reported last night that certain humanitarian agencies imported great amounts of sugar in Bosnia-Herzegovina after the war, and that some individuals transferred sugar to Croatia in order to export it in the European Union, and that profit earned in this way seemed to have been used for financing terrorist organisations.
According to TV FBIH, members of some relief agencies, organised in a network, transferred sugar to Croatia where they repacked sugar supplies and exported them to the European Union over several years immediately after the war ended in Bosnia in 1995.
The entire job was masterminded by Tunisian Sefik Ayadi, the head of the Muvafak humanitarian organisation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the television said adding that sugar, previously imported in Bosnia with false papers, ended up in the sugar mill in Osijek in which it was repacked for the export to EU member states.