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Barisic depositions reveal how HDZ spent siphoned state money

Autor: half
ZAGREB, April 23 (Hina) - The trial for the siphoning of more than HRK 70 million from state institutions and companies in the Fimi Media case resumed at the Zagreb County Court on Monday, when transcripts of former HDZ treasurer Mladen Barisic's depositions were read out and tapes of them were shown.

Barisic admitted to bringing cash to former prime minister and Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) president Ivo Sanader and filling the HDZ's slush fund with state money.

At the last hearing, he would not state his defence, so the panel of judges decided to watch the tapes and read the transcripts of his earlier depositions to the anti-corruption office USKOK.

"Sanader called me and asked that I collect as much money in euros as possible. I took that as an order, as I did before, collected the money and took it to Sanader," Barisic said in one of his depositions.

He said the money siphoned through the Fimi Media marketing agency was used to pay the hotel bills of Sanader's brothers and that he had to give them cash as well until Sanader stepped down as PM.

He said that at Sanader's request, he paid for the import of Mercedes oldtimers for Sanader's friend Mario Zubovic, and that he favoured the partner of Sanader's daughter in the purchase of a car.

In one of the depositions, Barisic said Sanader decided that controversial singer Marko Perkovic Thompson should be paid 515,000 euros not to sing for any political party during election campaigns.

He said the money from the HDZ slush fund was also used to pay singers Miso Kovac and Nina Badric to sing at rallies on the HDZ campaign trail.

According to Barisic, Sanader personally supervised all HDZ payments and "not even a cent of the HDZ's money" could be spent without Sanader's consent.

According to statements at the last hearing, the illegal money was also used to finance the party, Sanader's personal needs, election campaigns, the purchase of media, European lobbyists, the ruling coalition partners, the purchase of works of art to be given as gifts, and clothes of the government's female staff.

After the last hearing, Sanader and his former spokesman Ratko Macek, the only defendants in the case who did not plead guilty, questioned the veracity of Barisic's statements, which Sanader labelled as fiction.

Apart from Barisic, the defendants who pleaded guilty were former HDZ accountant Branka Pavosevic, Fimi Media owner Nevenka Jurak, and Marica Ivankovic, who represents the Fimi Media agency as a legal person.

(Hina) ha

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