Businessmen and tycoons who got rich during the 10 years of SNS rule

Under the rule of the Serbian Progressive Party, the businesses of some officials and people close to the SNS have flourished and since 2012 they became real billionaires. The owners of “Millenijum Team” Stojan Vujko and Ivan Bošnjak, the owner of Termomont Dejan Burčul, the wingmen of SNS Slaviša Kokeza and Ostoja Mijailović, as well as the first man of “Južna Bačka” Dragoljub Žbiljić received the most valuable jobs from the state, and the “tentacles” of their businesses reach from gasification, through the construction and automotive industry, all the way to insurance companies and covid hospitals.

A few years ago, the most valuable jobs in the country were reserved for companies close to the ruling structures, more specifically the SNS, as exemplified by the company “Millennium Team”, whose owners are linked to Finance Minister Siniša Mali.

This company is headed by businessmen Ivan Bosnjak and Stojan Vujko, who, in addition to the well-known ‘Millennium Team’, own fifteen other companies in Serbia and the region. Only three of their companies – “Millennium Team”, “Institut Goša” and “KBV Datakom” – have won 17 state deals worth at least 1.43 billion dinars or around 12 million euros in the last year, as reported by KRIK.

Just last year, Ivan Bosnjak and Stojan Vujko were awarded a contract by the state for preventive flood protection works in Niš, clearing the ground of unexploded landmines, building a road in Belgrade’s pet cemetery, reconstructing forest roads, a new stage for the Belgrade Drama Theatre, and, as the most valuable work, to build a new Vračar pumping station for Belgrade’s water and sewage system.

Last year alone, the MIlenijum team made a profit of RSD 1,281,743,000, which is twice as much as in 2019.

The intense rise of the Millenium team is linked to the period 2007-2012. year, when the Millenium team was part of a group of private companies that concluded gasification deals with Srbijagas. The total value of these deals was at least 242 million euros.

The owners of the company, Bošnjak and Vujko, have an excellent relationship with the first man of Srbijagas, Dusan Bajatović, having appeared together in pre-election spots. In addition, Siniša Mali’s own brother, Predrag Mali, drove an Audi owned by Vujko and Bošnjak for years.

After the gasification, the Milenijum team set about building Belgrade on water. First they demolished, i.e. cleared the site, and then they built. According to KRIK, the company was engaged, among other things, for the pre-construction landscaping, the laying of the foundation stone of the buildings that have so far been built in the complex, and its gasification.

They have also expanded their housing construction beyond Belgrade on the water, winning the contract to build apartments for members of the security services in Niš and Vranje at the end of 2018. The deal, worth 15 million euros, was awarded by the Ministry of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure to “Millennium Team” and the Turkish company “Taşjapi”.

Millennium Team’s construction works are growing and, as Novs.rs has already reported, the company is entering into a strategic partnership agreement with Mostogradnja, a company majority owned by the state. Subsequently, they also bought 200 hectares of agricultural land around Leskovac, as well as thermal baths and lakes. At the beginning of 2022, the “Jaroslav Černi” institute was sold to the Millennium Team for 2.5 million euros.

The owner of Termomont, Dejan Burčul, has been involved in large state projects and personal assets alongside Millennium Team. The Thermomont CEO first came to the attention of the general public in 2020, when Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic boasted on his Instagram profile “Buducnostsrbijeav” that he had received a cake in the shape of a covid hospital as a gift from the company.

As the weekly NIN reported in 2020, Dejan Burcula was paid around  4.7 million euros in dividends alone, representing his personal earnings.

On the Thermomont website, in the section showing the projects on which employees have worked, only acquisitions built in cooperation with the State are listed. In addition, Termomont states that it actively cooperates with state institutions, which contributes to the fact that it has built up a great deal of trust in the market. Of course, this trust is most often linked to state funding.

The many infrastructure projects they have worked on are testament to their cooperation with the State. Citizens of Belgrade probably do not know that Termomont built the fountain on Slavija, as well as the thermodynamic installations at the “Nikola Tesla” airport in Surčin, the parking garage on Obilić’s Venec, the parking lot at the VMA and a number of other facilities. The general public heard the most about Termomont in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, as the company carried out work on the construction of the covid hospitals in Batajnica, Novi Sad, Krusevac, and was also instrumental in the construction of the vaccine factory in Zemun.

Financial reports confirm that the business obtained from the State was quite lucrative. According to data available on the website of the Agency for Economic Registers (APR), Termomont increased its revenues by two and a half times from 2019 to 2021.

In 2019, Termomont earned 171,198,000 dinars, but in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, revenues dropped to 167,666,000 dinars, a negligible increase compared to the year before the pandemic. Termomont experienced a “breakneck” growth in 2021, where it generated a profit of 419,713,000 dinars, according to official figures.

Another company that actively cooperates with the state, from which it receives huge contracts, is “Energotehnika – Južna Bačka”, owned by Dragoljub Zbiljić. The owner of Južna Bačka is publicly known as a businessman close to the SNS, whose company receives millions of dollars in business from the state. In the period from 2013 to 2016 alone, the company earned around 110 million euros from public procurement.

BIRN also revealed that it was the guarantor of  55 million euros loan taken out by the SNS from Universal Bank for the 2012 elections.

As revealed by KRIK, the company bought the “Fountain” hotel in Vrnjacka Banja at twice the estimated price and then received state aid of  1.4 million euros to renovate the hotel. All this happened in 2018, after the regulation was amended.

Before that, Zbiljić transferred the hotel to the company “Vita assistant”, which is still owned by the SNS member of the Vojvodina Parliament, Milan Vlaisavljević. One of the major deals that Zbiljić won under controversial circumstances was the pumping of water from the Kolubara basin after the floods.

Slaviša Kokeza, a former SNS official and President of the Football Association of Serbia, also experienced a major rise after the SNS came to power.

He was a member of the Serbian Radical Party, and after the establishment of the Serbian Progressive Party in 2008, he became a member and official of that party. He is a member of the SNS Main Committee and Vice-President of the Belgrade Committee. At the beginning of May 2016, SNS President Aleksandar Vucic stated that “Slaviša Kokeza cannot be any official, not even a member of the SNS Main Committee, absolutely nothing, if he wants to be the President of the FSS.

The general public first became aware of him in July 2008, when he appeared at a press conference of the Serbian Radical Party, sitting next to the then Deputy President of the SRS, Tomislav Nikolic, and the Secretary General, Aleksandar Vučić. As reported, Kokeza was injured at a rally organised by the radicals in Republic Square to protest against the arrest of Radovan Karadzic.

According to the Business Registers Agency, Kokeza owns 100% of at least three companies – Eurosalon fabrika doo, Senior team doo and Best contact doo. He has ownership interests in several other companies, including „Srećni milioner“ (“Happy Millionaire”).

In addition, for years, Slaviša Kokeza’s name has been associated with Prointer, which has received major business from the Ministry of the Interior, the City of Belgrade, as well as from the well-known domestic arms exporter Jugoimport SDPR.

The country’s largest domestic arms exporter trusted Prointer and bought licensed software from it. Along with this contract comes the work of maintaining the same software for a period of one year. The total value of the agreed work is just over 60 million dinars.

Interestingly, the deal was awarded to the company, which has been associated with Slaviša Kokeza for years, after Kokeza was linked to the wiretapping of the President of the country, Aleksandar Vucic, for which he was arrested and interrogated. Since then, Kokeza has virtually disappeared from public view.

Until November 2015, as a representative of New Serbia, he was a member of the City Council of Cacak, responsible for the area of small and medium-sized enterprises.

In November 2015, he left New Serbia, resigned from the city council and joined the Serbian Progressive Party, explaining that he wanted to “bring new energy” to the party. In May 2015, he became a member of the Board of Directors of FK “Partizan”, a position he held until April 2016.

He was elected to the Serbian Parliament on the “Aleksandar Vučić – Serbia Wins” list in the extraordinary parliamentary elections held on 24 April 2016. In September 2017, he became President of KK “Partizan”.

In addition to his career in the SNS and the Partizan basketball club, his jobs have grown with the rise of the SNS. He is the owner of British Motors, which is a dealership for Jaguar and Land Rover luxury cars in Serbia.

Mijailović, through several of his companies, is involved in the maintenance and repair of motor vehicles, the sale of new and used cars, spare parts.

Mijailović also operates through Bavaria Motorrad in Čačak, Bavaria Cars d.o.o. in liquidation in Belgrade, as well as through Mops Invest in Belgrade, which is registered to buy and sell its own real estate.

On the domestic market, it operates through SZTR Kum in Čačak, but also through the Bavaria team, also in Čačak, owned by his wife Milica Mijailović. His companies have seen a growth in profits since 2017. Thus, in the companies in which he has a direct or indirect ownership, profits jumped from 1.5 million euros in 2017 to 2.9 million euros in 2019.

According to some media reports, Mijailović is also the de facto owner of the regional television Lav plus, which covers his hometown of Čačak, in addition to Užice and several other towns in the region. By the way, the US company Global Media INC, which took over the television in March 2017, is registered in the APR as the owner of this television.

Finally, according to the Belgrade Stock Exchange, Mijailović took a majority stake in the insurance company Globos in February 2020. According to the National Bank of Serbia (NBS), Globos ended 2019 with only 11 insurance policies sold. This January was similar, with 12 policies sold. February, which coincides with the acquisition of a majority stake, was slightly better (150 policies), but still far from the expansion that started in March and continued in April and the following months.

According to data from the Association of Insurance Companies of Serbia (UOS) obtained by BIRN, Globos sold almost 1,450 policies in just two days in September, on the 14th and 15th, bringing its share in the total number of policies sold in those two days to 6.94 per cent./Nova.rs/