September 14 (SeeNews) - Russia's Sberbank has said it has no plans to provide any further financing to Croatia's ailing food-to-retail concern Agrokor due to what it described as 'lack of transparency' in its management.
"For us, the situation is extremely opaque, we've told the Croatian government several times. It's strange that the Croatian government supports the lack of transparency," Russian news agency TASS quoted the CEO of the Russian bank, Herman Gref, as saying to reporters.
"In the absence of transparency, when we do not understand how much money is needed for the company, when we have claims to the quality of management, when we do not understand how efficiently this money is spent - we do not want to participate in such process," Gref added.
Moreover, Gref said Sberbank also plans to launch legal action against the auditor of Agrokor, which has been confirming the concern's false financial reports, TASS reported.
Sberbank is ready for a lengthy litigation and hopes to bring to justice the audit company of Agrokor, Gref said.
The auditor of Agrokor's financial accounts for 2013, 2014 and 2015 was the Croatian unit of UK-based accountancy and business advisory network Baker Tilly. In 2016, Agrokor said it named PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as auditor of its 2016 financial statements after preliminary probes revealed that potential accounting errors might have been committed.
Sberbank initiated arbitration proceedings against Agrokor and its 11 guarantors before the London Court of International Arbitration over loans totalling 450 million euro ($531 million) lent by the bank, the concern's ice cream and frozen food company Ledo [ZSE:LEDO] said last month.