Elated Agrokor Ex-Boss Vows to Win Election

After a Zagreb court ruled on Tuesday that that former owner of the indebted food giant Agrokor, Ivica Todoric, can be released after paying one million euros in bail, Todoric announced on Wednesday that he would run for elections, win power and turn Croatia in the right direction.

On Wednesday, the day after "his friends" paid a one-million-euro bail to leave the jail, Todoric returned to his old routines.

After 13 days in Remetinac pre-trial prison and after one year spent on the run in London, Todoric on Wednesday morning went to his old hair salon in the centre of Zagreb.

"I will win power and turn Croatia in the right direction; I'll run for elections," he told a reporter from "24 sata" daily.

Zagreb County Court offered Todoric conditional release from pre-trial custody after the investigating judge received confirmation that a million euros in bail had been paid.

Although his lawyers claimed last week that Todoric did not have enough money to pay up, on Tuesday they said the businessman had got the bail money together with the help of friends.

As a precautionary measures, the court has forbidden Todoric to leave his registered residence or leave the city of Zagreb without permission. He must also hand over his passport.

Todoric is under investigation for various types of fraud while he was the owner of Agrokor, which he founded in 1976.

The results of a financial review of the whole Agrokor group and its mother company showed that, instead of a reported profit of 160 million euros in 2015, the group had actually run up losses of 480 million euros.

Croatia's biggest private company found itself in financial trouble from the beginning of 2017.

Todoric was extradited to Croatia from London on November...