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One of the people closest to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, his godfather Nikola Petrovic, bought the airline Air Posh from controversial businessman Stanko Subotic, KRIK and OCCRP have revealed, which, according to KRIK, was done out of the public eye. The man bought the company, which owns a plane worth more than half a million euros, cheaply, according to the contract, for just 100,000 euros, hidden behind an offshore company registered in Luxembourg.
Nikola Petrović, the godfather of Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, founded a company in Luxembourg at the beginning of 2019, through which he secretly entered into a number of businesses in Serbia: solar energy technology development, import of medicines and air transport, Write KRIK.
The company that owned the plane, Petrovic, bought it from Stanko Subotic, a powerful businessman who had business connections in the world of crime, reveals KRIK in the international journalistic project “OpenLux”.
It is, as it is said, the data from the Luxembourg commercial register obtained by the journalists of the French “Monda” and the international journalistic network OCCRP, which reveal the true owners of the companies established in this small country in the heart of Europe, which is a destination on the high seas.
KRIK was among the 16 partners of the newspaper “Le Monde” who searched the collected data and dedicated themselves to investigating the agreements that Serbian businessmen concluded through Luxembourg.
The data reveals something that has been rumored for years: that Subotic is close to the centers of power in Serbia and has connections with the people of President Aleksandar Vucic.
His business partner Nikola Petrović is one of the closest people to Vučić, which is why he is considered one of the most influential people in the country. Immediately after Vučić came to power in 2012, Petrović was appointed director of the state company “Serbian Power Grid”. He left that position at the end of 2016 and continued with the private business of producing electricity in mini-hydro plants, which he sells to the state for millions of euros. He and his wife bought two luxury villas in Belgrade’s elite neighborhoods in previous years.
Subotic is a controversial figure whose business partners included the famous drug lord Darko Saric, recently sentenced to 15 years in prison for smuggling nearly six tons of cocaine.
Subotic himself was on the dock; They tried him for cigarette smuggling. He was originally sentenced to six years in prison, but the verdict was eventually overturned and he was released.
Subsequently, the Supreme Court of Cassation determined that the judges who acquitted Subotic violated the law when they withdrew the prosecution’s evidence from the case.
How the deal was made
Subotic and Petrovic have companies in Luxembourg, a tax haven located in the European Union.
Subotic arrived first. In October 2018, it transferred its key company “Emerging Market Investments (EMI)” from Denmark to Luxembourg. The company’s headquarters were first located in the capital and then the company moved to Ludelange, a city in the south-west of the country with about two thousand inhabitants.
Petrovic went on his way.
Three months after Subotic, in January 2019, the president’s godfather also registered his company “Fabergé Advisors” in Luxembourg. Although the ownership structure of this company is complex (the owner of “Fabergé Advisors” is a UK company owned by a Cyprus company), KRIK journalists found documents in the “Open Luxembourg” project data that prove that Petrovic is the ultimate owner of the company.
The company Petrovic and Subotic are located at the same address in Ludelange, where the headquarters of the tax consulting agency “Auditex”, which deals with the founding companies, is located. More than 400 companies are registered at the same address.
Their companies, in addition to the management, share the same directors.
Petrovic has appointed two French and Belgians as directors of his company, who have the same role in Subotic’s company. They are also directors of several other companies in Luxembourg.
Subotic then, through the company “EMI”, in April 2019, founded the airline “Air Posh” in Serbia, which next year bought the aircraft “Cesna 550” from a company in New York.
It is not known how much money was bought, but such a plane is worth between 700 thousand and 1.3 million euros, according to data from sites that sell planes.
A few months later, in October 2020, Subotic sold the company to Petrovic well below value, judging from the contract that the KRIK journalists found in the Serbian business register. The president’s godfather became the owner of the airline for just 100,000 euros.
Although it changed ownership, the Serbian company remained at the same address, in a building where Subotic has several apartments.
Borislav Radić has been appointed as the new director of “Air Posh”, a pilot who stated in his profile on the Linkedin social network that he works at “Air Pink”, an airline whose co-owner is media mogul Željko Mitrović. This Mitrovic company used the “Air Posh” plane while it was owned by Subotic, according to data on the company’s website.
Petrovic’s airline was transporting customers primarily to Vienna, but also to other European Union cities, Moscow, Kiev, Bodrum, Beirut, Tel Aviv, Sharm el-Sheikh and Dubai, according to flight monitoring sites.
The godfather of the president of Serbia did not want to speak to KRIK and OCCRP about his business with Subotic.
“I am not a public figure. I am not interested in answering your questions. Do not call me again. I will report you for harassment,” Petrovic said in a phone call.
“The users of my companies’ services are not state officials of the Republic of Serbia. It is expensive for them. I will not reveal who the users are,” he stated in the letter he later sent to KRIK.
KRIK, reportedly, also received no response from Subotić, to whom questions were sent through his lawyers.
In an interview with the weekly “Express” in 2016, he said he was glad that “the people in the first place are finally in power” and that the allegations of cigarette smuggling were brought by the previous government, but also by some people. from Croatia.
It was previously revealed that in October 2007, when he was in the process of forming the Serbian Progressive Party, Vučić found himself at the famous “Ritz” hotel in Paris on the same day as Subotić. Vučić’s former party colleagues from the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) claimed that the two then agreed that Subotić would help Vučić’s new party financially, but did not provide any proof of this.
In an interview with KRIK four years ago, Vučić said that he had “absolutely no contact” with Subotić and that he had never given money to the SNS. He confirmed that he was at the Ritz Hotel that day, but said that he did not meet Subotic there.
