Nova.rs: Ana Brnabic, Vucic's most loyal "Cerberus" - adds another million-dollar affair to her biography

Radar weekly exclusively revealed that Milos Popovic, who served as Ana Brnabic's chief of staff for three terms while she acted as the head of the Serbian government from June 2017 to March 2024, was "loaned" one million euros by a foreign company from an exotic country two years ago, for a period of several decades. The money was "put" on Popovic's account in one of the domestic banks based on a multi-decade loan agreement he had negotiated with the foreign company, and the loan was certified by a notary public in Belgrade.

"Formally, at first glance, everything was done in accordance with applicable laws. However, attention is drawn to the detail that a foreign company was ready to lend a million euros to the then Chief of Staff of Prime Minister Ana Brnabic, with the obligation that the debtor repay the loan only after 2050, when this case may no longer be remembered by its actors, let alone by the competent state authorities, whose job it is to investigate every suspicious transaction. In the meantime, in 2023, Milos Popovic used that money to buy a luxury apartment in Belgrade on the water and two garage spaces," Radar reported.

The weekly also revealed that unlike Milos Popovic, who was "loaned" more than a million euros by a foreign company, the Serbian Chamber of Commerce paid approximately the same amount to the company of his sister Aleksandra Popovic. That is how much the "consulting services" provided to the Chamber of Commerce by the company 'HRD Pro Consulting', whose sole owner is Aleksandra Popovic, and whose legal representative is Zvonko Popovic, another member of the same family, Nova.rs reported.

As Radar wrote, simultaneously with being the director of the consulting company from the beginning, Zvonko Popovic is the sole owner of the Agency for Consulting and Management HR Training and the entrepreneurial business HR Kapital, which are not required to submit annual financial reports to the Business Registers Agency (APR), and both are registered at the same address in New Belgrade. At one time, he and Nevenka Popovic were co-owners with a 50 percent stake each in the Arter Group, of which he was also the CEO until 2010, when the company went bankrupt, which is why it was deleted from the register of legal entities.

Three years later, his cousin Aleksandra appointed him director of HRD Pro Consulting, which she registered with a founding capital of just 100 dinars in February 2013, just half a year after the first SNS and SPS government was formed. Although it has only had one employee for years, the Serbian Chamber of Commerce paid more than a million euros into HRD Pro Consulting's account a few years ago for alleged consulting services. Before that, the annual revenue of the company, whose owner boasts on her Instagram profile that she is employed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, had never exceeded 633,000 euros, at least not according to publicly available data.

It is indicative, however, that the company did not spend the available money on some common things, but rather spent more than four-fifths on paying for "intangible costs". Even stranger is that all of the company's publicly available income statements for 2021, 2022 and 2023 are absolutely identical, and its financial results for 2024 have not yet been published on the APR website. They all state that in each of those years their total operating income was 74.2 million, operating expenses 70.2 million, and "intangible costs" 59.4 million dinars or 84.5 percent. Even stranger is that their income statement for 2022 states that in 2021 their operating income was 7.3 million, expenses 5.6 million, and intangible costs 3.2 million dinars.

The owner apparently spent the money that the Chamber of Commerce and Industry paid to her company by using her HRD Pro Consulting business card, which is used to pay for representation expenses, for shopping, mainly to buy the most luxurious goods in world capitals, from Paris to Dubai, Radar reported.