Croatian former prime minister Ivo Sanader has been sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment for war profiteering in a retrial of the so called Hypo Bank Affair, local newswires reported on October 22. 

The former PM and former leader of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) was also ordered to pay the government HRK3.6mn, N1 Zagreb reported.

Sanader was found guilty of receiving a HRK3.6mn (€484,273) commission from Austria's Hypo Bank during the 1991-1995 war. At that time, Sanader served as deputy foreign minister. In return, Sanader cleared the way for the Austrian bank, which has collapsed since then, to offer Croatia loans to purchase properties abroad for its embassies. 

Sanader was first sentenced in the case in 2012. He was also sentenced for accepting a €10mn bribe in the 2008-2009 period from the head of Hungarian energy group MOL, Zsolt Hernadi, to help MOL obtain a dominant position in Croatian oil and gas company INA. 

However, in 2015, the Croatian Constitutional Court annuled the verdicts in the two corruption cases. Sanader had initially been sentenced to 10 years in prison for accepting bribes from MOL and Hypo Group. In 2014, the Supreme Court shortened his sentence to eight years and six months, while upholding the guilty verdict.

The re-trial for the MOL-INA affair is scheduled to begin on October 23.

Sanader's lawyer called the latest court ruling "completely unjustified." "We believe the sentence to be completely unjustified and the charges themselves were illogical. There is absolutely no proof that Sanader accepted the provision and we expected the charges to be completely thrown out," Sanader's lawyer, Cedo Prodanovic, said, as quoted by national broadcaster HRT.

In a separate trial, in which Sanader was charged with influencing Croatian national power company Hrvatska Elektroprivreda (HEP) to enable privately-owned oil refining company Dioki to get a HRK15mn (€2mn) loan and deliver electricity at below market prices, the former PM was acquitted.

In the course of two terms as prime minister from 2003-2009, Sanader was widely credited as having done much to transform Croatia's image from one of a former war-torn Balkan backwater to a genuinely credible candidate for admission to the EU. However, he has also become a symbol of corruption in Croatia.