Armored Mercedes seized in Banjska lead to network of companies linked to Radoicic and Veselinovic

By analyzing the origins of two Mercedes G-Class vehicles used in the Banjska attack, BIRN uncovers a network of companies that are monopolizing the Serbian energy and transport infrastructure market with the help of millions of euros in public funds.

In September 2023, as police in Kosovo displayed the powerful arsenal confiscated from a Serbian armed group accused of killing Sergeant Afrim Bunjaku, two cars stood in the background.

Both were luxury four-wheel drive SUVs manufactured by Mercedes Benz.

At the time, media reports focused on military-grade weaponry – anti-personnel mines, mortar shells, anti-tank rocket launchers, rifles, ammunition and uniforms – used in what authorities in Kosovo call a Serbian-sponsored effort to secede the Serb-inhabited northern parts of the country.

Serbia has denied any involvement in the armed attack. But the cars tell their own story about the deep connection between the Serbian state and businesses controlled by the person who admitted organizing the attack and his associates.

A BIRN investigation traced the vehicles to a Belgrade-based car rental company called Pent Rent, part of a network of businesses linked to two Kosovo Serbs – Zvonko Veselinović and Milan Radoićić. This network, which also includes an electrical infrastructure company owned by Pent Rent, has benefited from a series of contracts with the Serbian state.

Radoićić has admitted leading the September 2023 attack on a Kosovo police patrol in Banjska, but fled to Serbia, where he remains at large.

Radoicic and Veselinovic have been under United States sanctions since 2021 for suspected involvement in organized crime, but this has not prevented the network of businesses they run from generating millions of euros in revenue, particularly in the energy and public transport sectors.

Car rental company coverage

Prosecutors in Kosovo told BIRN that the two G-Class Mercedes seized in Banjska belong to Pent Rent.

They were originally black, but were later covered with an olive-colored protective layer with the insignia of KFOR, the NATO-led peacekeeping force that entered Kosovo in 1999.

Pent Rent was founded in 2016 and is registered under the ownership of 48-year-old Dusko Djenadija.

Company financial records submitted by Pent Rent and a subsidiary show close ties to C&LC Group and family members of CLC Group manager Milorad Lovrić, himself a long-term associate of Veselinović.

Both Pent Rent and C&LC Group are registered at the same address in Belgrade.

According to a source who previously had business relations with Lovric, Veselinovic and Radoicic, Pent Rent was used to purchase luxury cars without VAT.

“In practice, the vehicles are not used for real rental purposes, but mainly for the private needs of Radoičić, Veselinović and their associates,” the source told BIRN, speaking on condition of anonymity, adding that Djenadija actually works as a driver for Lovric.

By tracing the chassis numbers, BIRN discovered that one of the vehicles seized after the attack in Banjska is listed in the Public Registry of Credit Guarantees in Serbia as collateral for a loan registered by Pent Rent in 2018.

According to its financial reports, available online at the Serbian Business Registry, Pent Rent earns most of its revenue from its affiliated companies, rather than from car rental.

For example, in 2024, the company reported revenue of around 242,000 euros from rent and other services, but 724,000 euros from related companies.

Taking control of transportation

C&LC Group of Lovric was founded in 2009, dealing mainly with construction.

In 2014, in a consortium with two companies – one of them Inkop, owned by Veselinović – C&LC Group won a public contract worth 75 million euros to build a section of the highway between Lajkovac and Ljig in western Serbia. In 2019, Veselinović’s Inkop bought a company called Betonjerka Aleksinac for 410,000 euros, although the initial price was set at two million euros. The sale price was approved by Betonjerka Sombor, one of Betonjerka Aleksinac’s largest creditors and a subsidiary of Lovric’s C&LC Group. Betonjerka Aleksinac produces concrete poles, transformer substations and other infrastructure for electricity and telecommunications.

The following year, Betonjerka Aleksinac and Betonjerka Sombor were part of a consortium of companies that won a 2.5 million euro contract from the Serbian public energy company EPS Distribution to supply concrete electricity poles, Serbian investigative media outlet Insajder reported. The consortium was the sole bidder.

In mid-2024, BIRN revealed that Lovric’s C&LC Group was at the head of a consortium that won a €1.2 billion tender to provide buses and drivers for public transport lines in the Serbian capital. C&LC Group’s own share amounted to around €178 million over a 10-year period. Operating around 80 buses in Belgrade, Lovric’s company suddenly became the largest private operator in the capital’s public transport.

At the time, Lovric stated that he had collaborated with Veselinovic in 2014 and 2015, but that they were not close business associates.

“He has his bank account and his house; I have my bank account and my house, the company I work for,” Lovrić told BIRN.

The facts speak differently.

In fact, there are also family ties.

Only 22 years old, Predrag Lovric is a co-owner of the construction company Meteor 017, together with Vladan Milanovic, director of Veselinovic's Betonjerka Aleksinac. Until January of this year, Meteor 017 and Betonjerka Aleksinac also had shares in the trading company Metalotehna. Multiple sources have identified Predrag as the son of Milorad Lovric.

Sole bidder

Pent Rent is the sole owner of the company Elektroizgradnja Bajina Bašta, which deals with the infrastructure and maintenance of the electrical network.

Financial reports submitted by Elektroizgradnja Bajina Bašta show that it has financed a wide network of companies, many of which are linked to Lovric.

In 2024, for example, Elektroizgradnja Bajina Bašta granted a short-term interest-free loan of six million euros to C&LC Group of Lovric.

The company has also provided short-term loans to several other companies linked to Lovric and individuals with the same surname – Beaz Plus and Labah (both owned by C&LC Group), Niel Group (owned by C&LC Group until 2023, when ownership passed to 24-year-old Nina Lovric) and C&LC Kameni Aggregati (owned by another individual named Predrag Lovric, 50).

That same year, according to its financial report, Elektroizgradnja Bajina Bašta received a loan of 1.6 million euros from the Serbian government's Development Fund with an interest rate of 1.8%.

However, her relationship with the state does not end there.

Since 2021, Elektrodistribucija Srbije, the Serbian state-owned electricity distribution company, has awarded Elektroizgradnja Bajina Bašta – either independently or as part of a consortium – 36 public tenders worth 143 million euros, making the Pent Rent-owned company one of the largest players in the electricity infrastructure sector. In many of the tenders, the company or consortium it was part of was the sole bidder – a red flag for potential corruption.

Elektroizgradnja Bajina Bašta repeatedly competed for these contracts in consortium with C&LC Group subsidiary Betonjerka Sombor, and Inkop's Betonjerka Aleksinac.

Lovric, Djenadija and Veselinovic did not respond to requests for comment. Radoicic could not be reached.

Powerful figures in northern Kosovo

For years, Milan Radoićić and Zvonko Veselinović have exerted great political and financial influence in northern Kosovo, where Serbs continue to resist full integration into a state dominated by ethnic Albanians.

Until the Banjska attack in 2023, Radoićić was the vice-president of Srpska Lista, the main political party in Kosovo representing the Serb minority and, practically – though unofficially – an offshoot of the ruling Progressive Party in Serbia.

Radoicic says he acted in Banjska without informing authorities in Belgrade. Earlier, prosecutors in Kosovo identified him and Veselinovic as leaders of a criminal group accused of the 2018 gunman's murder of prominent Kosovo Serb politician Oliver Ivanovic, although neither was formally charged with the murder.

Last month, a court in Kosovo convicted three Serbs of terrorism and serious offences against the constitutional order of Kosovo in connection with the attack in Banjska. Two of them were sentenced to life imprisonment, while the third was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Despite public admission of his leading role, Radoicic has not been charged in Serbia nor extradited to Kosovo, which Serbia does not recognize as an independent state. The High Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade did not respond to requests for comment on whether and how it is investigating the attack or the network of financial interests behind those involved.

Veselinovic and Radoicic have admitted to registering companies in the names of employees.

In 2015, during court proceedings regarding the retention of 32 trucks after the termination of a leasing agreement with Hypo Alpe Adria Leasing, the two men admitted that the companies through which they operated the trucks were registered in the names of employees.

Veselinović and Radoićić were found not guilty. The panel that issued the acquittal was headed by Rastko Popović, then a judge at the High Court in Belgrade.

Since then, Popović has been promoted to the position of deputy president of the Belgrade Court of Appeals.

His wife is former Justice Minister Maja Popović, who was elected a judge of the Constitutional Court in December last year on the proposal of Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić. Popović previously worked for the Serbian intelligence agency BIA.

The article was originally published in Balkan Insight.