Slovenia's former Prime Minister Janez Janša is auctioning off several personal items to raise funds for €30,000 in court costs he has been ordered to pay to a prosecutor and judges that he unsuccessfully sued for damages.

Janša, the leader of the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), opened an online auction on 21 November by offering three items of clothing he wore as defence minister during the 1991 war of independence and the following year.

Just before the auction of the three items closed, the highest bid for his 1991 military uniform, offered at a starting price of €2,500, stood at €2,900. The highest bid for his 1992 winter officer's jacket was €1,600, €100 above the starting price, and his summer officer's shirt fetched a bid of €1,000, matching the starting price.

Information on how much the auction fetched in total has not been published, but according to the bids just before the end of the auction at 9pm on 21 November Janša is believed to have raised €5,500.

Janša is planning to continue the auction in the coming days by offering seven paintings, with the starting prices ranging from 400 to 4,000 euros, to pay for the costs of what he has labelled as the "injustice system".

He also launched the pre-sale of his new book Budnica (Wakeup Call) last week to raise the money.

His party believes the auction will be successful and he will raise the amount needed to cover the court costs. He was supposed to pay those by 14 November, but asked for a deferral and was given a new deadline by 22 November.

Court costs related to Patria case

Two weeks ago, Janša announced on X that the Maribor Higher Court had upheld a decision requiring him to pay €30,260 in legal costs to a prosecutor and four judges in the Patria defence deal corruption case.

Janša was sentenced to two years in prison before the 2014 general election for allegedly accepting a promise of a bribe in connection with the 2006 tender won by the Finnish defence contractor Patria.

He was released after six months on order from the Constitutional Court, which later quashed the original ruling and ordered a retrial. The case became statute-barred in September 2015 in a decision that Janša unsuccessfully appealed.

In 2018, Janša filed a damages suit against the state, ex-prosecutor Branka Zobec Hrastar and four judges, accusing them of having acted unlawfully in the Patria case.

While Janša's lawsuit against the state is still pending, he lost his case against the judges and the prosecutor, and has been ordered to reimburse their litigation costs. Only recently the judges and the prosecutor were targeted in an online hate campaign.

The auction has attracted quite some attention, also because Tina Gaber, a prominent Instagramer who is the partner of Prime Minister Robert Golob, posted a video on Instagram in which she offers a voodoo doll featuring a cut-out of Golob's face to be included in the auction.

SDS MP Rado Gladek commented by saying that Gaber appears unaware of her position as a public figure. The SDS youth wing went a step further, posting a video on X in which they mockingly offer Gaber assistance in finding a new partner.