The Sarajevo Canton Prosecutor's Office has requested assistance from Hungarian authorities in an investigation in which one of the suspects is Zsolt Hernádi, Chief Executive of Hungary's Mol oil and gas group, who should be interrogated about the privatisation of the Bosnian oil company Energopetrol, chief Sarajevo prosecutor Dalida Burzic was quoted as saying in Dnevni Avaz daily.
Former Mol executive Zoltán Várady and former CEO of Croatia’s INA, Tomislav Dragicevic, are also under investigation.
“We have requested international legal assistance from Croatia and now from Hungary,” Burzic said.
Energopetrolt was privatised by Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2006, and the Mol-INA consortium bought a 67% stake in the company, which has the largest number of petrol stations in the country.
Based on the sell-off agreement, the consortium was to invest 76.7 million euros in Energopetrol but the minority shareholders suspect that the injection was the result of a mortgage on the company’s real estate.
According to Croatian press, shareholders reported the case to authorities in 2010, saying the majority owner had taken out not one but two mortgage loans on Energopetrol’s real estate, a EUR 28 mn loan in 2006 and EUR 48.5 mn in 2010.
Eight Bosnian citizens have been on trial at the Sarajevo Municipal Court since 2014 for signing a harmful contract to that end.
Mol Chairman-CEO Zsolt Hernádi, former Mol executive Zoltán Várady and a former CEO of Croatia's INA, Tomislav Dragicevic, are also under investigation, Burzic announced.
The Sarajevo prosecution has already requested the Zagreb County Court to interview Dragicevic.
Mol told news agency Bloomberg earlier that they had not received any official request or notification regarding the investigation in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
