The paper says, quoting unnamed sources, that Finnish police discovered a copy of the bid of its only rival in the controversial 2006 public tender for 135 armoured personnel carriers. Patria's only competitor was Slovenian defence company Sistemska tehnika.
According to Dnevnik, the investigators moreover established that Patria, which eventually secured the EUR 278m deal, obtained the rival documents from Wolfgang Riedl, its representative for Eastern Europe based in Vienna.
While the industrial espionage case appears firm, the investigators are reportedly struggling with tracing bribes that are suspected of having been paid out by Patria, Dnevnik writes.
According to a September 2008 report by Finnish broadcaster YLE, Patria distributed some EUR 21m in alleged kickbacks to officials at the Ministry of Defence and Slovenian politicians. The YLE reported that the alleged bribery went as far as Former Prime Minister Janez Jansa.
Dnevnik writes that the part of the investigating looking into suspected bribery has hit a dead end because Austrian authorities stopped in 2007 money transfers allegedly related to deal and suspected of having been intended for kickbacks.
Finnish police are however said to have found a comprehensive bribing plan for the deal at Patria, which also contains Jansa's name, the paper says.
The former Slovenian prime minister confirmed recently for the weekly Reporter that "people in Finland have told me that the investigation has uncovered...a plan by the executives of Patria for securing the defence deal...supposedly containing the breakdown of the cabinet and relevant bodies and all the names, including mine". He stressed, however, that this document does not prove that Patria realised the plan.
Meanwhile, a separate investigation in Slovenia has so far also not yielded any evidence of bribery.
State Prosecutor General Barbara Brezigar told TV Slovenija on Monday that no proof had been found until now to back the accusations.
"The fact that the Patria scandal has been abused for political purposes does not make things any easier for the prosecutor," Brezigar added. She could not comment on the details of an ongoing investigation.
The Patria scandal broke out just before the September 2008 general election in Slovenia, after YLE ran the story.
Jansa, whose Slovenian Democrats (SDS) lost the election, has all along rejected the claims in the report. He has filed criminal complaints against several people involved in it, including the journalist and Slovenian guests.