Leaving the post of Prime Minister Ivo Sanader submitted his declaration of assets to the Conflict of Interest Commission, but did not give complete data and concealed the truth about his personal assets. In the declaration of assets, in which nothing has changed in relation to when he came into office, it is stated that he owns a 100-square metre apartment in Split, which not correct. It also states that his spouse's assets include a 200-square metre apartment and garage in Zagreb. Nowhere, however, is there mention of the value of these apartments, or the fact that his wife's apartment is in a villa located in an elite part of Zagreb. The majority owner of the villa is formally Sanader's father-in-law Ivo Saric, but many have suspicions concerning the true nature of the ownership of this high-priced 600-square metre villa, five minutes by foot from Britanski Square.

But from the data on the declaration of assets it could be concluded that the former Croatian Prime Minister is a relatively impoverished man: after a political career spanning almost twenty years, and his previous, allegedly very successful years as a businessman in Austria, he now, by his own admission, owns only a 100-square metre apartment in Split and a 1967 Renault 8, which he proudly points out as a sign of his own modest means, even though the public does not know where this automobile is to be found, if it even exists anymore. Sanader has, however, again deceived the Croatian public with his last declaration of assets, because according to the available information he is not the formal owner of a single piece of real estate, i.e. he has nothing and - is homeless. There is no Ivo Sanader in the Split land registry, with an apartment of 100 square metres or any other size.
In the background, however, he has a more than well off family on his wife's side. Besides his wife Mirjana, a university professor of archaeology, who owns one third of a building on No. 21 Kozarceva Street in Zagreb and a 100-square metre apartment in downtown Split, his father-in-law, a former employee of the Split shipyard, could be declared one the of the wealthiest retired labourers in Croatia. Besides having received, as an employee of limited means without a permanent place of residence, an apartment in 1964 from the Split shipyard, Saric has over the past twenty years become a full-fledged homeowner.

Besides being the formal owner of two-thirds, i.e. 400 square metres of a residential building on No. 21 Kozarceva Street in Zagreb, Saric's son and Mirjana's brother Nenad became the owner in 1997 of an apartment at No. 109 Ilica Street in Zagreb, which he in the meantime sold. In June of 1995 his wife Karmela, Mirjana's mother, purchased a 65.42-square metre apartment in Split in what was No. 26/a Aljinoviceva Street, now No. 9 Karamanova Street, for 310 thousand kuna. So it appears that a former worker at the Split shipyard, his homemaker wife and daughter, a professor of archaeology, have come into a huge estate over the past twenty years, and now live in a 600-square metre building in an elite quarter in downtown Zagreb. And while they have sold the apartment on Zagreb's main street, owned by Nenad Saric, they own a house and two apartments in Split. Mirjana Sanader's spouse, until recently the Croatian Prime Minister, however, owns no real estate. What is more, in the event of a divorce he could wind up on the street because his wife owns only a third of the house on No. 21 Kozarceva Street, half of which he would be entitled to by law, while he would have no legal claim on two-thirds of the house and the garages owned by Mirjana's father, unless he could prove that they were purchased with his money.
But then he would have to explain to the Croatian public where he got the money. Nobody has, however, asked Ivo Saric where he got the money for luxurious real estate, even though there is no indication of how he succeeded in saving up the kind of money he spent in the 1990s buying up real estate in Zagreb. Ivo Saric, namely, spent his entire career living in quite modest means, working at the Split shipyard. He started and spent a long time working as a common pipe fitter. But he did not want to spend his entire life doing the toughest jobs on the shipyard's docks and he undertook his own education while working. It was in fact during the time Saric earned his diploma in engineering and quietly moved up the ranks that the then powerful and influential Ante Jurjevic Baja spent his long term at the helm of the Split shipyard. Saric soon moved up from a common labourer to a mechanical engineer and moved from the docks to the firm's development department. He was remembered for his efforts to improve transport within the shipyard and for introducing a bus line from one part of the shipyard to another. Saric was never at the head of any sector or the sales department, nor did he become a board member, but he did gain a very secure post in the development department, and was particularly tied to Doctor Spiro Vukman, a prominent engineer, who went on to become the general director of Brodosplit after the first democratic elections in 1990. It was with Vukman's help that Saric received his master's degree at Zagreb University's Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture. But Saric and his family, wife, son and daughter, lived in very modest means, like many working families. In 1964 Ivo Saric was given an apartment in Split by the Brodosplit Company. Only the families of the workers and administrators of the Split shipyard moved into the new, at the time modern, four-entry residential building in Split's Sukoisan quarter. At the time an apartment provided by the state was a real prize, especially one just a ten minute walk from the shipyard. Ivo Saric and his family lived in this apartment on No. 26 Sukoisanska Street in Split without interruption from 1964 on. In the land registry the newly graduated engineer Saric was entered as the sole owner of an apartment on the sixth floor, with a floor area of 80.5 square metres, consisting of three rooms, a kitchen, living room, bathroom, hallway, two balconies and auxiliary space.

Saric, then, exercised his rights and in the 1990s purchased the state-owned apartment as, along with the automobile he bought in the mid 1980s, the only assets he gained during his career. It is, however, true that he also owned a bungalow, which together with its yard covered 287 square metres at No. 1 Put Duja Street, which he, in 1975, bestowed to his daughter Mirjana and son Nenad, each receiving half, retaining the right of usufruct, and that he lives to this day at that address. The apartment in Sukoisanska Street is empty for the most part, and the Saric's drop by there for short stints during the summer. During the winter the father and mother of Mirjana Sanader spend most of their time with their daughter and son-in-law in their Zagreb villa. Nearby the house, Ivo Saric purchased three small plots of land for garages.

Besides the valuable real estate owned by the former Prime Minister's wife and her father, the two took part in the purchase of various works of art and other movable assets, of which former Prime Minister Sanader stated in his declaration of assets that the were worth about 1.5 million kuna. This is one of the three most valuable art collections in Croatia, along with those of Bozo Biskupic and Nadan Vidosevic. Along with numerous paintings by the most pricey contemporary artists like Edo Murtic, Mersad Berber, Zvonimir Mihanovic, Ivan Rabuzin and other, Ivo Sanader owns some 40 paintings by the most valued Croatian painters of the modern art period. Painters such as Vlaho Bukovac, Josip Racic, Miroslav Kraljevic, Celestin Medovic, Slava Raskaj, Bela Cikos Sesija and others. But the art collection worth a million and a half kuna, owned by him and by his family, Sanader only cited in his amended declaration of assets, after the chairman of the Conflict of Interest Commission Josip Leko asked him to disclose information concerning the luxurious wristwatches that have ever more frequently adorned the Prime Minister's hand these last years, and the origin and procurement of which the Croatian Prime Minister has not explained to the Croatian public to this day.

Since his return to Croatia and the dawn of his political career in the early 1990s Sanader and his family have significantly improved their lot in life. In 1992 Sanader served as Minister of Science and Technology and, as a government official, resided in a room of the Intercontinental hotel in Zagreb, while his wife Mirjana and their two daughters lived in a rented apartment in Split. While working as an editor at the Logos publishing house in the early 1980s and after his second return from Austria in 1990, Mirjana and Ivo Sanader lived with Mirjana's parents, in the apartment owned by her father Ivo Saric.

They had no other residence. And while he worked as the intendant of the Croatian National Theatre in 1991 Sanader lived in the modest apartment owned by his father-in-law and mother-in-law. Some of Nacional's sources state that during one period in the early 1990s the four-member Sanader family lived in a rented apartment in a house in Zagreb's Remete quarter owned by the parents of his, until-recently, chief of staff Bianca Matkovic. Not long after getting seriously involved in politics the Sanader family had a turn for the better. Based on what he wrote in his declaration of assets he purchased a 100-square metre apartment in downtown Split, even though it is clear now that he deceived the Croatian public, because the apartment is owned by his wife. According to sales contract Z-178/92, namely, concluded on 24 April 1992 between Slavko and Zlata Lazeta on the one side and Mirjana Sanader on the other, she purchased a four-room apartment on the first floor of a house on No. 15 Rijecka Street, for what was then 9 million 400 thousand Croatian dinars, i.e. for 100 thousand German marks. And Sanader's wife began buying real estate in Zagreb. Nacional has gained access to three sales contracts whereby Mirjana Sanader and her father Ivo Saric, from 1992 to 1994 purchased almost an entire building at No. 21 Kozarceva Street in Zagreb, in cash, for the price of over 600 thousand German marks, which was then, in war-torn Croatia, a massive amount of money.

According to the contract, Mirjana Sanader on 19 November 1992 purchased a 113-square metre three-room apartment on the second storey of the building on No. 21 Kozarceva Street from its then owner Duro Papac for the price of 77,175,000 Croatian dinars, i.e. 225,000 German marks. Just a year later, on 20 December 1993, Ivo Saric, Mirjana Sanader's father, concluded a second contract purchasing a three-room apartment on the first storey of the same building from Vladimir Filipcic. Given that Tea Radivojevic Kerekovic, the bearer of tenancy rights, lived in the apartment at the time, the apartment was sold as being under tenancy, and Ivo Saric paid Filipcic only 95 thousand German marks, i.e. 395.955.000 Croatian dinars for the ownership of the apartment, and it remains unknown to this day in what fashion the Sanader family managed to have the tenant move out of the premises.

A clause in the contract states only that as regards the bearer of tenancy rights the right to pre-emptive purchase was respected as the tenant was offered the purchase of the apartment in a letter dated 29 September 1993, stating that she did not respond to the letter within the 30-day deadline. After having gained possession of two storeys of the large building on Kozarceva Street, situated in downtown Zagreb, not far from Britanski Square, the Sanader family purchased their third piece of real estate the following year. On 22 December of 1994 Sanader's father-in-law Ivo Saric purchased a three-room apartment on the ground floor of the same building from Branka Klupac for 876 thousand kuna, the equivalent then of 240 thousand German marks. By then the Croatian Prime Minister's family owned almost the entire building on No. 21 Kozarceva Street - a third of the building (some 200 square metres) was owned by the Prime Minister's wife Mirjana, and two-thirds (some 400 square metres) were owned by her father Ivo Saric. Sanader moved on from his post of Science Minister to take the post of Deputy Foreign Minister, and in 1995 to become one of the closest aides to former Croatian President Franjo Tudjman - besides taking on the post of the President's Chief of Staff, Sanader was also appointed the General Secretary of VONS, the Defence & National Security Council.

In 1997 Nenad Saric, Mirjana Sanader's brother also found residential space in Zagreb, at least formally. He had graduated engineering and moved to the USA 25 years ago. From the papers on the condominium conversion of the building on No. 109 Ilica Street it can be seen that the 94.62-square metre, forth floor apartment no. 32 belonged to Nenad Saric, registered as residing at his father's Split address. His father was, besides, involved in acquiring the real estate from the start. Ivo came to see the apartment in place of his son Nenad, who lived in the United States, and then rented it out, before they sold it in 2004 to Davor Boskovic of Zagreb.

The way in which the Saric family came into possession of the four-room apartment at No. 109 Ilica Street is also interesting. The Stanograd Company, which built the building, owed the City of Zagreb money, and at the same time the City of Zagreb owed money to the Produkt Company, then owned by Ante Zuzul, the current owner of the Skolska knjiga publishing company, for the development of a waste depot near the Borovje subdivision. And so it was, probably by cession, established that the director of Stanograd, Zvonimir Skegro, should cede six apartment units to Ante Zuzul, who in turn had one of the apartments sold to Nenad Saric. The procedure whereby this was done involved Saric paying Stanograd for the apartment, which then transferred the money that same day to the account of Zuzul's firm, Produkt.

For the Sanader family to be able to proudly state that the entire building at No. 21 Kozarceva Street was theirs, only one other issue had to be settled at the time, and that was the issue of the ownership of the basement apartment, and the tenant at the time, Bozena Sesljaga, and that issue has not been resolved to this day, as the legal battle continues, a legal battle that could end soon, far from the eyes of the Croatian public. Over the past years the dispute had long been at the Zagreb Administrative Court, unassigned. Nacional has gained insight into the entire documentation concerning the problems with the building at No. 21 Kozarceva Street, where the recently resigned Croatian Prime Minister Sanader resides with his family. Based, namely, on excerpts from the land registry, the building at No. 21 Kozarceva Street was erected in 1928 and consisted of four apartments - one on each storey and the basement. In 1959 the then Nationalisation Commission exempted three apartments, in which the then tenants and owners lived, from nationalisation, and declared the fourth apartment, the one in the basement, the property of the state and put it at the disposal of the municipal authorities. In March of 1979 the Self-Governing Interest Community for Residential Affairs of Zagreb's Centar municipality allocated the 50-square metre basement apartment for utilisation to Bozena Sesljaga, who moved in then, and was there in the early 1990s to await her new neighbours - the Sanader family. She did not, as Nacional's sources indicate, enjoy good neighbourly relations with them from the start.

An uncertain legal battle has been led for some ten years now over a part of the building at No. 21 Kozarceva Street. Three former tenants, or rather their descendants, submitted on 24 June 1997 a claim for the restitution of nationalised property, which pertained above all to the former basement apartment, but also for monetary compensation of the value of the land on which the building at No. 21 Kozarceva Street was erected. The logic in their claim is that the basement apartment was nationalised for decades, and now that the bearer of tenancy rights has moved out, it is time to restore it to the ownership of those to whom it belonged prior to nationalisation, rather than being granted to the Sanader family. That was followed by a legal procedure that has lasted for years now, and in which the legal representative of the former tenants, Zagreb attorney Zvjezdana Znidarcic Begovic, faced an impossible mission - to prove to the competent institutions that there is a 50-square metre apartment in the basement of the building at No. 21 Kozarceva Street.

The Municipal Office for Ownership Rights Affairs has, namely, for years now claimed that the apartment in question does not exist, which it corroborates by the fact that it is not found in the list of apartments owned by the City, from which it was deleted in 1996 by a decision of the Municipal Residential & Utilities Company (GSKG) that was based on a very suspect technical supervision carried out by two GSKG clerks, and all requests from attorney Begovic that an on-site examination be carried out, i.e. that the state of repair of the basement apartment at No. 21 Kozarceva Street be investigated and established have met with the same response from the Municipal Office, namely that "it is not necessary." And so on 23 June 2005 the Municipal Office finally issued a decision rejecting the request for the restitution of a two-and-a-half room apartment in the basement of the building on Kozarceva Street because - "it does not exist." Attorney Begovic filed an appeal on the decision with the Ministry of Justice on 23 July 2005 in which she charged the competent authorities of leading the entire process in a fashion favouring the Sanader family. In the appeal attorney Begovic states that the "entire course of the first-instance procedure was led in such a fashion that all of the decisive facts not be established, but instead to favour only the current owners of the exempted apartments in the real estate in question (the Sanader family, editor's note), and who with no legal grounds usurped the use of the property that according to the law belongs to the appellants, and have moreover carried out the registry of ownership contrary to the law," attorney Begovic wrote to then Justice Minister Vesna Skare-Ozbolt.

Since the Justice Ministry receives all denationalisation-related appeals to first-instance rulings, there are many such cases, but in this one the Ministry's civil law department demonstrated exceptional speed in processing the case. Besides the fact, as Nacional has learned, that State Secretary Snjezana Bagic saw to it that the case be withdrawn from the regular procedure and that it was given special status in processing, the assistant to Minister Ana Lovrin and one-time nominee for the post of a Judge on the Constitutional Court Boris Koketi had already by 27 July 2006, obviously jumping the queue, issued a decision rejecting the appeal attorney Zvjezdana Znidarcic Begovic had filed on behalf of the three former owners. As the chief argument in Koketi's statement of grounds, which Nacional has seen, it reads that the appeal of the three former owners is rejected because on 5 April 1996 the "former part of the building ceased to be an apartment and became a basement." This same "basement" now has renovated windows with PVC joinery and curtains, although one cannot see any further than that because of the police security detail still enjoyed by the former Prime Minister, whose home is a "protected edifice". But, besides the basement, the Prime Minister also got the loft space that has now, by all accounts, also been converted into an apartment. It is not known how much money the recently resigned Prime Minister and his family invested into the renovation of the entire villa, including the "non-existent" apartment in the basement and the loft space which are now residential space.

Following this decision from the Assistant to the Justice Minister, who was also a candidate for a post on the Constitutional Court, attorney Znidarcic Begovic used the last legal recourse she had, and filed for litigation with the Administrative Court of Croatia. By an ironic twist of fate, however, the court is presided over by Ivica Kujundzic, who was at the head of the State Ombudsman's Office of the City of Zagreb, where from the start of the legal proceedings he was the opposing party in the case of the request for the compensation of expropriated property filed by the three former owners of the building at No. 21 Kozarceva Street. And so, as Nacional has learned, their case waited unassigned for months in the Court President's drawers. But when we contacted attorney Zvjezdana Znidarcic Begovic she said she had neither objection nor complaint and that there were good prospects that her clients would secure their legal rights in full. They will get satisfaction, then, after "only" 12 years of litigation, during which time the former Croatian Prime Minister Sanader, his wife Mirjana, their two daughters and the parents of Mirjana Sanader enjoyed the benefits of a 600-square metre building in downtown Zagreb. But in that house Ivo Sanader, according to what he wrote in his declaration of assets, owns - absolutely nothing, not even the garage. The only thing left to him is, perhaps, the odd pricey wristwatch.

Admittedly, Ivo Sanader, who was born as Ivica, but changed his name in 1992 to Ivo, inherited 105 thousand euro with accompanying interest from his late father Ante. It is interesting how Sanader's father Ante, even though he was at the time of his son's birth a painter by profession, succeeded in his lifetime in saving up a half million euro if he left each of his five children 105 thousand euro. If he left this amount only to Ivo, the question is why to him alone, but those are, after all, their family affairs.

But Jadranka Kosor is now troubled least by Sanader's inheritance. She is struggling with patching up the holes in the national budget, left there, among other things, as the result of the last six years of the "brilliant" policies of former Prime Minister Sanader. For his part he does not have to trouble himself with these matters because his existence, even if the country were to collapse, is secure, regardless of formally being homeless.

He has spent the past ten days sailing on the yacht Malo vitra (A Little Wind) of which it is said that it is currently owned by the Zagreb-based Pomilon Company. The firm was set up on 10 March of last year, at about the same time the boat was purchased. One of the first things the 35-year-old owner of the business, Neven Poldrugac, the son-in-law of Dr. Mario Zubovic, a Member of Parliament and Ivo Sanader's best friend, did was in fact to purchase and contract for the costly overhaul of a yacht previously owned by Split businessman Juroslav Buljubasic. Who and in what fashion paid 300 thousand euro, the figure cited by the Vecernji list daily, for the overhaul, we were unable to learn from the shipyard in Sibenik, where we were told that the information was a business secret. But Nacional carried out an investigation of the data on the financial affairs of this newly established firm. Since 10 March of last year, when it was founded, to 31 December of last year the company saw total revenues of 308,386 kuna, i.e. 42,244 euro, and total expenditures of 316,219 kuna, i.e. 43,317 euro, which means that it suffered a loss of 13,630 kuna or 1,867 euro. Perhaps it would be of no interest to the public what purpose a newly founded company operating at a loss would have for purchasing a yacht, but since the yacht is being sailed by former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, perhaps the owner of the Pomilon Company, Neven Poldrugac, should, after all, have to answer some questions. One of these questions, besides the money required to purchase the vessel, would concern the origin of the money needed to overhaul the boat, an overhaul that according to the data published by the Vecernji list daily, which has been confirmed by Nacional's sources, cost at least 300 thousand euro.
Neven Poldrugac did not answer the questions we wished to ask him because he was on his vacation. At his firm Pomilon we were also unable to get anyone to answer the phone, but we did at the Venevent Company at Gunduliceva Street. And while we asked them to relay a message, we have not received his answer.

It is unclear why Neven Poldrugac set up the Pomilon Company when he is already the director and co-owner of another three firms; Venevent, Pokobar and the latest, Relatum, founded on 17 July of last year. These firms are faring well and he could have purchased the boat through any one of them. The oldest of these firms is Venevent, set up on 16 October 2002, where Poldrugac's partner is Igor Kordic. Up to 2007 the company had its offices at No. 20 Kukuljeviceva Street in Zagreb, also the address of the Zubovic family apartment and one of the medical offices of the Dr. Zubovic Polyclinic led by Martina Poldrugac, the daughter of Mario Zubovic. The new firm, Pomilon, also has its office at No. 20 Kukuljeviceva Street, not five minutes on foot from the villa on No. 21 Kozarceva Street where Ivo Sanader lives. The fact that the new firm was set up a the same time as the boat was purchased begs the logical question of whether it was not perhaps a case of concealed ownership of the vessel in favour of a third party.