(Updates with official confirmation)
ZAGREB, Nov 12 (Reuters) - Croatian police arrested the head of the national chamber of commerce (HGK) on Tuesday on suspicion of embezzling millions of euros, HGK said, as the new European Union member pressed on with an anti-corruption drive.
"We can confirm HGK president Nadan Vidosevic is being investigated ... we cannot make any further comments at this stage," a HGK statement said. It said the head of HGK's finance and accounting department was also under investigation.
Local media said Vidosevic was arrested in front of his former headquarters at chocolate-maker Kras in the Croatian capital, where he was chief executive until recently. Police had questioned him for hours and searched his office and a family house in Zagreb.
Vidosevic, who has headed HKG for 18 years, has no personal spokesperson and was not available to comment.
Media reports said Vidosevic had become one of the wealthiest people in Croatia since it became independent in 1991.
State radio said Vidosevic was suspected of diverting 32 million kuna ($5.63 million) from HGK, which is financed by fees from local companies, through a scheme based on fictitious invoices, mostly for advertising and marketing services.
Several shell companies owned by Croats and based in the Czech Republic are alleged to have been involved and two men linked to those companies had been arrested, media said.
Croatia joined the EU in July, after a broad anti-graft campaign launched in 2010 met one of the conditions for it to complete accession talks.
Former prime minister Ivo Sanader has been sentenced to 10 years in jail in a case that involved the payment of bribes to Austria's Hypo Bank and the Hungarian oil and gas group MOL. He has appealed and has denied any wrongdoing.
His former HDZ party, now in opposition, is in court in the first trial of an entire political party, accused of creating slush funds to finance its electoral campaigns. ($1 = 5.6862 Croatian kunas) (Reporting by Zoran Radosavljevic; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
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