The owner of Promist that imports fertilizer, is a businessman close to SNS

The company "Promist d.o.o." for the wholesale of chemical products was established at the end of November 2002. According to the portal Nova.rs , in 2012 it politically sided with the SNS when its dizzying business success started.
It is one of the owners of the company Galens d.o.o., founded in 2004 by brothers Aleksandar and Bojan Galic, while Petric became a co-owner through the company of his wife Sanja in 2014.

He is close to Vucic and Dodik

The public in Serbia has linked the company with both Republika Srpska and Milorad Dodik, suspecting RS capital is behind it. Galens' "Pupin's Palace" in Novi Sad is called Dodik's palace by the citizens of Novi Sad, precisely because of the insinuation that the current president of the RS is actually the real investor.

Petric has other businesses, so he is also engaged in construction and his project "Novi Sad Waterfront", caused public outcry and protests in that city. His wife became known to the public after it was announced that she had bought 205 plots on Fruska Gora, partly within the National Park itself.

The Portal Nova.rs in the series of articles "Robbery of the Year", wrote about how in just a few years the company grew from just an average company into a behemoth whose investments today are in billions of dinars.

For this, it is said they needed only good political connections and friends in the right places.

Trucks carrying artificial fertilizer from the port of Durres were detained at the Zetatrans terminal for scanning, which was eventually not done, but the tippers were released to go further to Serbia. The country of origin of the fertilizers is Turkmenistan, and the buyer is precisely the company Promist.

However, there are suspicions that in recent months thousands of trucks have transported fertilizer originating from Russia through our country, despite EU sanctions that Montenegro also joined, which was originally announced by the Pobjeda newspaper.

Such two trucks, with artificial fertilizer of Russian origin, were stopped the day before yesterday at the Montenegrin border, but their fate is not yet known.

Serbia is also the largest buyer of Syrian "bloody" phosphate

In June, the OCCRP (an investigative organization that deals with organized crime and corruption published an article on the import of phosphate (a key ingredient of fertilizer) from Syria to Europe, which they say has been on the rise in recent years. Syria has some of the largest known phosphate reserves, and its importers include Serbia, as well as EU members Italy, Bulgaria, Spain and Poland. Ukraine was also among them before the Russian aggression.

These six countries, according to data obtained by the OCCRP, have imported Syrian phosphates worth over $80 million since 2019.

According to them, this trade enriches the Syrian state, war profiteers and people who are deeply connected with the Russian elite. An OCCRP lawyer said it was a "commercial version of international money laundering".

Phosphate exports provide economic bailouts for the government of Bashar al-Assad and direct European funds to Syria's key partner in the phosphate trade: Russian billionaire Gennady Timchenko, a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The U.S. has imposed sanctions on the Syrian government and a Russian company that appears to control most of Syria's phosphate exports - Strojtransgaz. The EU has also sanctioned Syria's Toumeh, as well as the owner of Strojtransgaz Gennady Timchenko. However, neither the US nor the EU expressly prohibits the purchase of Syrian phosphates. They are banning deals with Syria's minister of oil and mineral resources, who is in charge of phosphates.
The countries, however, say they have not violated the sanctions because Syrian phosphates are not expressly banned and do not work directly with people under sanctions.

Thus, European companies pay an intricate network of fictitious firms and intermediaries to buy Syrian phosphates.
In Serbia, according to OCCRP the largest buyer of Syrian phosphates in Europe in recent years, one of the importers was a former cosmetics company. According to the OCCRP, the Serbian business register shows that the company imported $26.9 million worth of products from Syria in 2021, but did not specify what it was.

"Syrian phosphates are very bloody, not only because of the conflict in Syria, but also because of what is happening in Ukraine," Glen Kurokawa, a phosphate analyst, said.