Prosecutor of the Prosecutor's Office of BiH Ivan Matešić embraces Sanader at a football match in Russia

KALININGRAD, (Patria) - Prosecutor of the Prosecutor's Office of BiH Ivan Matešić posed embracing former HDZ president and Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader at the first match of this year's World Cup in Russia.

Croatia played against Nigeria on Saturday in the Russian city of Kaliningrad, and a photo of former Prime Minister Sanader and his fans, including Matešić, was posted on Facebook by PR expert Vedran Strukar, reports the Patria news agency.

According to data from the official website of the Prosecutor's Office of BiH, Matešić was born in 1975 in Prozor, in the municipality of Prozor-Rama in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Mostar in 2000. He was elected to the position of prosecutor of the Prosecutor's Office of BiH at the end of 2013.

Earlier, from 2007, he served as advisor to the Federal Minister of Justice, and at the end of 2008 he was appointed as Assistant Federal Minister of Justice for Administration. Last year, he was also a candidate for Chief Prosecutor of the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but prosecutor Gordana Tadić was elected to that position. The media had previously linked Matešić with the HDZ of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the leaders of that party.

Former HDZ president Ivo Sanader has been convicted, non-final, for multi-million euro crimes in several scandals. The Croatian prosecution charges Sanader in cases such as 'Fimi Media', 'Hypo', 'Ina – Mol', 'Planinska', 'HEP'... It was precisely the presence of BiH prosecutor Ivan Matešić with the suspect Sanader that sparked reactions on social networks, including a reaction from the well-known Croatian journalist Drago Pilsel.

Fimi Media is one of the biggest corruption scandals in Croatia – a case in which USKOK charges Ivo Sanader for siphoning more than 70 million kuna from state institutions and companies through the marketing agency Fimi Media.

In the autumn of 2015, the Supreme Court overturned the non-final verdict in the Fimi Media case, in which not only Sanader but also the HDZ were convicted of corruption, and sent the entire case back to the beginning. Several months earlier, the Constitutional Court had also sent back to the beginning the case in which Sanader was convicted of war profiteering in the 'Hypo case' and for receiving bribes for Ina from Hungary's MOL.

Awaiting new trials for Fimi Media, Hypo and Ina - Mol, Sanader has in the meantime appeared in court also in the Planinska case, on charges of taking a 17 million kuna commission for the purchase and sale of a building owned by former HDZ parliamentary representative and butcher shop owner Stjepan Fiolić in Planinska Street in 2009.

Prosecutor of the Prosecutor's Office of BiH Ivan Matešić stated in a 2013 interview: "Courts and prosecutor's offices are completely independent of the legislative and executive branches, both in terms of the selection of judges and prosecutors and in relation to the financing of courts."