Numerous lobbyists played important roles in the months of negotiations in the INA privatization. There are claims that the threesome Davor Štern, Josip Radeljak and Boro Maletić were backing the MOL bid. While Štern and Radeljak is nothing shocking, the involvement of private dentist Boro Maletić comes as quite a surprise. However, only for those who do not know that Maletić has been promoting the interests of Hungarian capital in Croatia for some time. Allegedly, his friendship with a high ranking official in the Croatian Privatization Fund has helped quite substantially. At the beginning of the INA privatization process, Štern was in fact promoting the interests of Slovenia’s Petrol and an Israeli company, only to switch over to MOL after they backed out. He is also representing MOL in their takeover attempts of Serbia’s Beopetrol.

The involvement of Davor Štern in the lobbying for MOL suggests that Yukos is also involved: it is well known that Štern represents the interests of Russian capital.Allegedly, MOL was also represented by well known oil trader Enver Moralić. Several months ago, Moralić subtly began asking around about the exact level of the bids received for the INA shares. That was several weeks after Nacional published an article in January 2003 releasing that Rosneft had bid $440m for 25% of INA, while OMV had bid $380m. At that time, business circles were speculating that the bids could be 10% above or below Nacional’s information.
Allegedly, Moralić met with the vice-president of MOL regarding the INA share sale, and some even claimed that Moralić temporarily backed away from purchasing IPK Kutjevo to avoid accusations that he set the terms of the IPK purchase with his proposal that the government sell INA to MOL. Some claim that based on Moralić’s recommendation, MOL consented to bid an additional $50m for INA. With Štern, Radeljak, Maletić and Moralić, MOL was also allegedly represented by the company Deloitte&Touche, via Vladimir Milosevic, a Stanford graduate. He previously worked on the SDP economic program, and working with him for MOL was also attorney Radovan Pavelić from the Plišo and partners law firm in Zagreb. All this representation best indicates how anxious MOL was to get its hands on the INA shares.

Marijan Kostrencic, the official representative of the Austrian oil company OMV needed over 20 hours to get over the shock of learning that the Hungarian oil company MOL had bid $505m for the purchase of 25%+1 share of INA. After a sleepless night, Kostrencic called up sleepy CEO of OMV Wolfgang Ruttensdorfer at 7:15 a.m. on Friday, suggesting that he send a letter to the government before the INA Privatization Council Meeting at 11:00 a.m. that OMV was also prepared to pay $505m for the INA shares. At first, Ruttensdorfer rejected Kostrencic’s proposal, justifying that decision saying that he could not risk ruining his management career over INA. In the end, he consented to call an emergency board meeting at which it was agreed that Ruttensdorfer would send a new bid worth $505m to Zagreb. The letter was immediately drawn up and sent just before 10 a.m. to Economy Minister Ljubo Jurčić. Minister Jurčić immediately contacted Premier Račan and informed him of the spectacular turnabout. When Račan asked what they should do, Jurčić responded, “We will act as though we never got the message.” Unlike his unusual undecisive self, Račan this time was decisive: he accepted the Minister’s explanation and did not even mention the new OMV bid at the INA Privatization Council meeting: instead the Council proposed that the government should accept the MOL bid.

Minister Jurčič of course could not consider the new OMV bid, as that would destroy the credibility of the government and the INA privatization. However, he did not wish to roughly cast aside the OMV bid: he knew that it was a joker in the government’s sleeve just in case MOL asked to change the bid if they found any controversial elements among the confidential INA documentation. Furthermore, OMV did not send in their bid expecting the government to accept, but in the case that MOL attempted to reduce their price or failed to collect the money on time.
That is, OMV still believes that MOL will not succeeded in collecting and paying the full amount of $505m in the 15 day deadline.

The sensational $505m bid by MOL for 25% of INA astounded the Austrian rivals, as well as the world experts. Only minutes after the MOL bid was announced, the price of that company’s shares fell 2.5% on the Budapest Exchange. This was an understandable reaction by investors: the realistic value of the 25% of shares, according to experts, is between $360 and 380. Considering that MOL bid $150m more, such a reaction was to be expected on the markets. MOL has no support for such a high bid in its operations and business balance, and the price has no real business justification, even if MOL is aiming to takeover a majority share in INA in the near future. OMV is also convinced that MOL will not be able to maintain the refinery in Sisak, whose production is not profitable. The price of oil products primarily differ due to the price of transport. The acceptable price is possible is formed only if the oil is delivered within 400 km around the refinery, but there is no other refinery in the area. The MOL refinery is located only 200 km away, and therefore, OMV is convinced that this will lead to unloyal competition between the two refineries of the same company.

MOL of course did not make such an important strategic decision overnight. Only days before the deadline for the final bids, the MOL executive board made a sensation decision to send a bid of $505m instead of the planned $450m. In order to accomplish this, MOL had to increase its earlier credit requests from $500 to $600m.
If such a difficult strategic decision worth half a billion dollars is not based on economic logic and is not financially profitable, then it is clear that there are other motives. Therefore, it was no surprise when speculations immediately arose on why MOL decided on such a risky move. Speculation is also flying in expert and political circles. In one, the Russian oil concern Yukos is standing behind the entire operation. Those well informed claim that the two largest Russian oil companies, the state held Rosneft and private Yukos, though rivals, harmonize their appearances abroad. For that reason, it is assumed that Rosneft backed away from the bid to buy the INA shares, in order to avoid competing and raising the price for Yukos. A second reason making these speculations believable is the fact that former Economy Minister and INA director Davor Štern has been lobbying for MOL from day one, and it is well known that he also represents Russian capital. There is yet another variation: that MOL’s purchase of the INA shares is part of a broader strategy to bring all its companies together: Sloneft from Slovakia, MOL, INA, and Romanian, Slovenian and Serbian oil companies, and then sell off this central European oil concern to a large multinational company.