Janković told the press that he did not know if he was among the three people - two Ljubljana municipality employees and an appraiser - the NBI was taking action against, saying that he found out about the case from the media.

POP TV mentioned on Thursday Janković and Miran Gajšek, the head of the spatial planning department of the municipality, but wrongly reported that the land sold was not owned by the municipality.

The two plots were sold to the company Tritonis, which planned to build a garagen and an office building on them to later found out that no construction was allowed on the land in question.

According to the NBI, the municipal employees misrepresented between March 2008 and March 2009 and withheld facts about the land being sold to secure gains for the municipality and cause EUR 1.1m in damage to the private company.

Janković argued today that hundreds of such sales had been carried out by he municipality. "Tritonis was insisting on the purchase, which is why decided for the sale...and held a public auction," he said.

"Is there anything more transparent than a public auction," he said, adding that a notary had confirmed that the contract was entirely legal.

"It was possible to build on the plot and it was owned by the municipality when Tritonis bought it," Janković insisted, saying he had also told this to the NBI when investigators interviewed him.

NBI head Darko Majhenič on the other hand explained that this criminal complaint over fraud, which carries a prison sentence of up to 8 years, was only one among many in a large-scale criminal investigation into white-collar crime and corruption.