After USKOK amended the indictment against Božidar Kalmeta and others, the former Sanader minister repeated that he was not guilty.
– I stand by all my earlier defenses in this proceeding. I reject the amended indictment because the incriminations have nothing to do with me – said Kalmeta, former HDZ minister from Ivo Sanader’s government, accused in the HAC – Remorker affair.
Riječ is about the repeated trial for accusations from 2007 and 2008, and the first indictment was brought in 2016. In addition to Kalmeta, Zdravko Livakovi, Milivoj Mikuli, Stjepko Boban, Damir Kezele and Sandro Vukeli again denied guilt in their defenses.
All of them stuck to their earlier defenses, and the Livakovsć and Mikulić they claim that they also mathematically analyzed what they were accused of, based on the findings of the financial expert and the verdict after the guilty pleas of some of their former co-defendants whom Mikulić calls to penitents. They say that the analysts determined that none of the accused could have received any money.
Livaković in supplementing his defense, he said that there is no evidence that he influenced or persuaded anyone to provide him with an undue financial benefit of over 10 million kuna.
– The amended indictment is a poorly invented construction – he concluded.
His defense announced that they would attach to the court a ‘map of the assets of Josip Sapunar’, one of the main witnesses who pleaded guilty at the very beginning and settled with Uskok. According to the indictment, the trail of extracting money from HAC through Igor Premilovac’s company stops precisely with Sapunar, and the credibility of his testimony was also questioned by Mikuli.
– It is interesting that a man doesn’t know how big the apartment he lives in, who doesn’t know what assets he has, in his statements in court knows exactly what amount he gave to whom, and that after he pleaded guilty and settled with USKOK – he said.
Works 20 years old
In the amended indictment, Kalmet is accused of ordering the production of the film Traffic Renaissance of Croatia for the Ministry of the Sea, Transport, Tourism and Development in 2007 and 2008 from Fimi media, for the purposes of political propaganda in 2007, even though the financing of political propaganda from the state budget was not allowed, but that is why he no longer charges that part of the approximately 15 million kunas that were extracted from HAC through the Remorker company ended up in his pocket. Earlier, he was accused of having an improper financial benefit of a little more than 500,000 euros from the money extracted from HAC, now he is charged with having an improper financial benefit only related to the Port of Gaženica, and that of 222,222 euros. The amended indictment accuses Kalmet of abusing his position and authority as a minister and thus enabling Zdravko Livakovi to get about 10 million kuna from the money that was withdrawn from HAC through Remorker. In the previous indictment, Kalmeta was accused of having received part of those 10 million kuna, or 1.4 million euros.
The first indictment was brought in November 2016, and the first illegal verdict, which was later partially annulled by the Supreme Court, was handed down in 2019. The retrial began in 2023, and the indictment was also amended that year. USKOK claims that the money was extracted from the companies for the maintenance and construction of roads, and that about 1.5 million euros were extracted from the Viaduct via Remorker, of which the Livakovi illegally withheld almost 1.4 million euros, while Kezele illegally withheld around 100,000 euros. In that act, Kalmet is accused of having used his position to enable others to gain substantial benefits. In point two, he is accused of obtaining illegal property benefits for himself and others, so he illegally acquired 222,222 euros. The same amount is charged to Livaković and Sandro Vukelić. Kalmeta is also accused of having damaged the budget by 81,247 euros by securing work for Fimi Media for the production of the film Prometna renaissance Hrvatska, and the prosecution filed a property-legal claim for that amount on behalf of the state.