Kofner said that the report contains factual errors, notably that INA generates 9.4% of Croatia’s GDP, whereas the MOL unit actually accounts for only between 2% and 3% of the country’s GDP.

Kofner added the fact that former INA manager Jasminko Umicevic is the head of Oil and Gas Consulting brings the impartiality of the company’s report into question. Kofner further noted that MOL is troubled that Croatia’s economic ministry has attempted to tarnish the company’s reputation.

The Croatian daily Jutarnji list reported on Monday that Oil and Gas Consulting had stated in its report that the failure of MOL to keep its promise to invest in INA has cost the unit $6.2 billion. The newspaper said that Economy Minister Ivan Vrdoljak showed the report to a MOL delegation last week. In responding to a query by MTI directly following the report’s release, a MOL statement maintained that the consulting companies had repeated the “false information” in the report for some time. “The false allegations will never be true even if they are repeated a thousand times,” ran the statement in part.

MOL holds a little less than 50% of INA’s shares, while the state of Croatia owns about 45%. MOL’s perceived lack of investment in INA and the state’s failure to take over INA’s loss-making gas business, as stipulated in a shareholders agreement, have been sources of tension between the two shareholders who conduct talks on possible future arrangements.

— material from national news service MTI was used in this article