Serbian opposition:Telekom paid for pro-regime paper;fmr KCN man may be minister

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Opposition leader Marinika Tepic said on Wednesday that the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) managers at the Telekom Serbia paid for the purchase of an influential tabloid.

Speaking at a news conference in front of the headquarters of Telekom, Tepic said that SNS officials in the state-owned telecommunications company handed businessman Igor Zezelj the 10 million Euro used to buy the Adria Media Group and its Kurir tabloid and added that she would be sending all the information she has about the deal to “all relevant international addresses”.

“The international community has to know that the management is misusing the assets and money of both the citizens and the state to establish a monopoly over the media solely to maintain the ratings of the party and the ‘brotherhood’,” the deputy leader of the Party of Freedom and Justice (SSP) said.

“The SNS Telekom management paid our 10 million Euro to Igor Zezelj’s company and he then passed that advance to another subordinate company which then bought the Kurir tabloid. I am demanding one more that Telekom and all of Zezelj’s companies disclose their balance books and reports and deny what I said,” she told reporters.  

Tepic said Zezelj registered the purchase on January 4, 2019, after Telekom records showed advance payments of 14 million Euro just four days earlier, adding those payments were three times lower a year earlier.  

She said that there was no legal way for Zezelj to have gotten 28 million Euro when he had just 2,000 a year earlier with an annual income of 600 million Dinars (1 Euro – 118 Dinars).

 “What are they hiding if everything is so transparent and business was never better, especially in Telekom,” she said.

“Why are they falsifying data about Telekom being worth four billion Euro when we clearly hear that it might be worth that much in three years. So what are we facing today? The SNS management has made Telekom worthless, tripling its debts in just two years,” she said.  

Tepic repeated her call for an independent expert commission to investigate Telekom and for the State Auditing Institution to release its report on the company.

She also called the Telekom management to stop hiding behind claims of a political campaign.

“Things are clear. You pushed Telekom into debt, increased the debt to more than a billion Euro and increasing its income by just three million. Release the reports, show us the balance, bank reports, all documents on transactions and advances. Otherwise, you can be sure that you will be held accountable for all this much sooner than you think,” she said.

Later on Wednesday, N1 TV and website re-published documents which Tepic mentioned and which the TV had access too earlier. It unsuccessfully tried to get comments from both Zezelj and Telekom.

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In the meantime, one of the main players in the Telekom most significant business affair, Zvezdan Milovanovic, who according to official data was one of the Kopernikus Cable Network company (KCN) owners, could become a telecommunication minister in Serbia’s new government, according to the Juzne Vesti website’s sources.

He is the brother of Srdjan Milovanovic, who sold Kopernikus to Telekom for 195 million Euro, and whose company then bought the O2 and Prva TVs.