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A court in
Croatia has sentenced former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader to 10 years in prison
for taking bribes, in a case closely watched by the EU.
Sanader, in
office from 2003 to 2009, was convicted of taking millions of dollars in bribes
from a Hungarian energy company and an Austrian bank.
The former
prime minister denied wrongdoing at his trial.
Croatia,
which hopes to join the EU in July of next year, is under pressure to tackle
widespread corruption.
Correspondents
say the EU is taking a harder line with the Balkan state than with Romania and
Bulgaria, which were allowed to join the bloc despite struggling to address
their problems with corruption.
Sanader,
59, is the most senior official to have been convicted of corruption in
Croatia.
'War
profiteering'
He was
found guilty of accepting a bribe of $12.8m (£8m; 10m euros) from the Hungarian
oil company MOL in return for securing it controlling rights in Croatia's state
oil company Ina.
Unless
Tuesday's verdict is overturned on appeal, Croatia may review MOL's shareholder
agreement with Ina, Reuters news agency says.
In 1995,
when Sanader was a deputy foreign minister, he received $695,000 in bribes for
a credit deal with the Hypo Alpe Adria Group, which gave the Austrian bank a
leading position in Croatia.
At the
time, Croatia was still fighting its war of independence from Yugoslavia,
meaning it had trouble accessing the international markets.
Prosecutors
described Sanader's action as "war profiteering".
Sanader
argued that the case against him was politically motivated.
He is also
on trial, separately, for allegedly creating slush funds for his political
party, the conservative Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), by skimming off
profits from state companies and manipulating public tenders.
The HDZ
ruled the country for eight years until its defeat in elections in December
2011.
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