Prosecutors issued an indictment on Friday saying Georg Gavrilovic, who heads the Gavrilovic family company, engaged in war profiteering – an offense with no statute of limitations – during the bloody breakup of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
Prosecutors say Gavrilovic requested then Finance Minister Jozo Martinovic to transfer to him 2 million German marks (about $US 1.1 million in current value) that had been earmarked for Croatia’s war effort.
The money was then used by Gavrilovic as part of a 3.3 million mark purchase of family assets that had previously been nationalised by Yugoslavia’s communist government.
The true value of the assets, which included a factory in the town of Petrinja, was nearly 68 million marks, prosecutors said.
The Gavrilovic family, however, have said the charges are a response to their attempts via arbitration in Paris to recover assets seized by the state in 1945 and to claim € 300 million (US$ 333 million) in reparations. The family said the 1991 purchase was legal.
