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Police say Croatian ex-PM arrested in Austria

10 December 2010 23:27 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Former Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader was arrested Friday on an international warrant a day after he left his home country amid a corruption probe, APA reports quoting â€œAssociated Pressâ€.
An official at the Austrian Federal Office of Criminal Investigations said Sanader was arrested on the expressway connecting the provinces of Salzburg and Carinthia.
Sanader was then brought to the detention facilities of the Salzburg provincial court, said the official who did not give his name on the telephone.
In a statement mailed to the Zagreb office of The Associated Press, Croatian police spokesman Krunoslav Borovec said Austrian police informed them that Sanader had been arrested at 3:50 p.m. (1430 GMT) "in the Salzburg area."
Sanader, who abruptly resigned as prime minister 17 months ago, left Croatia on Thursday morning, when it became clear that prosecutors wanted to investigate him for allegedly conspiring to commit crimes and abuse of office.
Once hailed at home and abroad for uprooting the nationalism that reigned in Croatia in the 1990s and making it pro-Western, Sanader is now a fugitive. Biographical information and his photo appeared on a Croatian police and Interpol lists of wanted persons Friday, and police searched his home.
He has a company in Austria and has visited the United States to speak at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, which focuses on countries of the former Soviet Union, East Central Europe and the Balkans.
Sanader â€” the highest-ranking official to be charged with a crime since Croatia became independent in 1991 â€” was last seen driving into neighboring Slovenia on Thursday morning. Repeated efforts to reach him on his cell phone Friday were unsuccessful.
The Croatian parliament lifted Sanader’s immunity from prosecution Thursday afternoon.
Croatia’s Office for Suppression of Organized Crime and Corruption said Sanader is suspected of conspiring to commit crimes and abuse of office. It did not disclose details of the ongoing investigation, but at its request Zagreb district court ordered Sanader’s 30-day detention.
Several former government officials and businessmen â€” including Sanader’s closest allies as prime minister â€” have been jailed as Sanader’s successor, Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor, works to fight high-level corruption â€” a key condition for Croatia’s entry into the European Union. Croatia hopes to join the bloc in 2012.
Croatian media have been speculating for months that Sanader was under investigation in Kosor’s anti-graft crackdown. The opposition claims that graft was widespread in his government and that he either condoned or led it.
According to a U.S. cable published by WikiLeaks, chief state prosecutor Mladen Bajic told the U.S. Embassy in Zagreb in January 2010 that there are several ongoing corruption cases targeting Sanader and that at least one case could lead to his indictment.
Bajic referred to one case in which Sanader allegedly arranged a bank loan for a neighbor in the 1990s in return for an 800,000-German mark (euro410,000; $542,000 at today’s rates) kickback.
It also quoted Bajic as saying that, although some cases against Sanader may seem minor, "Al Capone was brought down for tax evasion rather than for his more notorious activities."
Sanader quit as prime minister at the middle of his second term, saying only that he had decided to leave politics. Kosor later removed him from her governing conservative Croatian Democratic Union, but he returned to parliament as an independent lawmaker last month.