Stjepan Fiolić, the owner of a meat industry and former HDZ parliamentary representative, confirmed at the trial in the Fimi media case that he received valuable artworks and two suitcases with expensive suits, ties, and Brioni socks from former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader before his escape to Austria.
Fiolić recalled that he found a house for Sanader in the vicinity of Jasenovac for which Sanader gave him money and the personal ID of his father-in-law Ivo Šarić, in whose name the property was purchased.
“I came with a van to his house in Kozarčeva and took them to my yard,” said Fiolić, recalling that Sanader requested him to come with a van without his company’s name on it. In addition to about 15 paintings that Fiolić personally took from the house in Kozarčeva, Sanader’s driver later brought four more paintings by Bukovac to his estate. Among the artworks that Fiolić kept on his estate in Mlaka, which he later handed over to USKOK, are works by the most famous Croatian artists such as Vlaho Bukovac, Celestine Medović, and Ivan Lacković Croate.
Fiolić revealed the story of Sanader’s artworks hidden on the estate in Mlaka to USKOK investigators during the investigation in the ‘Planinska case’, in which both of them, along with former minister Petar Čobanković, are charged with the illegal sale of Fiolić’s building in Planinska Street to the Ministry of Regional Development at a significantly higher price than the market value. Although Fiolić claimed after his arrest in April last year that he kept the money from the sale of the building, he later changed his statement, saying that he took 17 million kuna to Sanader.
