SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Zagreb Court judges have accepted an offer of €2 million in bail to release the mayor of the Croatian capital Milan Bandic who has been remanded in custody on suspicion of corruption.
Milan Bandic and eight other suspects detained in an operation codenamed "Agram" accepted the bails ranging from 99.84 kuna (€13) to 4.5 million kuna (€587,000), Kresimir Devic, a spokesman for the Zagreb Country Court, said on Wednesday.
Bandic accepted a 15 million kuna bail surety - a record in Croatia.
The bail was submitted to the court in the form of real estate by friends of Bandic.
Bandic will be free on bail as soon as the mortgage money gets transferred to the court.
As Bandic did not want to resign from his mayoral post, the court banned him from working due to the possibility of influencing witnesses in the investigation, until or unless charges are dropped.
Mass arrests
The previous highest amount offered for bail in Croatia was to Ivo Sanader, at 12.5 million kuna.
Sanader, a former journalist and Croatian Prime Minister, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2012 after being found guilty of corruption.
The sentence was later reduced to eight-and-a-half years.
Bandic has been in custody since 19 October, after Croatian criminal investigators conducted mass arrests including that of the mayor, 16 associates and the representatives of private construction companies.
They are accused of corruption, abuse of office, influence peddling and embezzling 20 million kuna.
A popular figure, Bandic has been mayor of Croatia's biggest city for the last 14 years.
He ran in the presidential elections in 2009, losing to the current President, Ivo Josipovic, in the second round.
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