Former Croatian prime minister Ivo Sanader, who is presently in custody in Salzburg, should be transferred to Zagreb's prison Remetinec by the end of May, because that is the deadline that Austria has to meet regarding Sanader's extradition, the Zagreb-based weekly Nacional writes adding that the information has been obtained in the informal conversations with Austrian officials.

The weekly notes that well-informed Austrian sources said that the investigation into Sanader's alleged ties with the officials of the Hypo Group Alpe Adria is about to be finished.

At the end of 2009, the Austrian special investigation unit, the "Sonderkommando Hypo", started investigating all the business transactions of the Hypo Group Alpe Adria bank, specifically the connections between the bank and the former prime minister.

The source close to the Hypo Group Alpe Adria bank claims that even in the late 1990s Sanader was supposedly one of the people to be given most credit for the huge number of the bank's credit facilities, guaranteed by the state of Croatia.

Sanader, who was arrested on December 10, 2010, on the international warrant issued by the Croatian prosecution, is suspected of abuse of office, and has been kept in custody ever since.