By: Andrej Žitnik (Nova24tv.si)
Do you remember Miloš Njegoslav Milović, a former member of the special police forces, a security guard of former Prime Minister Drnovšek and the unofficial-official head of security of the current Prime Minister Robert Golob, who was first caught in a lie in the National Assembly because of a question about Milović, saying that he had nothing to do with him? Well, Milović has just been convicted!
The notorious Miloš Njegoslav Milović has recently been convicted in the Supreme Court, according to reports on the N1 website, for his involvement in a fictitious deal of the Railway Construction Company (Železniško gradbeno podjetje), for which he was sentenced to a year and a half in prison.
The Supreme Court confirmed the decision but declined to disclose details. The Specialised State Prosecutor’s Office and Milović’s lawyer Miha Šošič said that the Supreme Court upheld the 2021 conviction of the High Court. Milović’s appeal was rejected, but his prison sentence was reduced from two years to one and a half years. He will also have to pay a fine of 15,000 euros. Milović’s lawyer has announced an appeal.
What was Milović convicted of?
Milović was convicted of participating in a fictitious deal that was worth 390,000 euros and concluded between the Slovenian Railways’ Railway Construction Company and the company NB Engineering (NB Inženiring) in 2008. The prosecution argued that the Director of NB Engineering, Nihad Bešić, kept 383,000 euros for himself, while Milović was to receive 7,000 euros. Bešić and the Railway Construction Company Director Leon Kostiov had already pleaded guilty at the first instance court, while Milović pleaded not guilty.
Milović admitted that he helped the company NB Engineering obtain a tax number, but insisted that he was not involved in the fictitious transaction and that he knew nothing about it until he was already involved in the criminal proceedings. He claims that he then started to investigate what happened and also recorded conversations with those involved.
He stated in court that he believes that his former employer, then-lawyer and now UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin, was involved in the deal and that he ended up in court because of him, although Čeferin repeatedly denied these allegations. The media outlet Požareport wrote that the prosecutor had saved Čeferin because he was running for the post of UEFA President at the time. A police report was drawn up on Čeferin’s involvement, based on statements made by the accused.
Some sources say that at the time of the crime, Milović was seriously ill and was tricked by Čeferin and thus made to participate in the crime.
Milović was initially charged with incitement to abuse of position but was acquitted at the first instance court in January 2021. The prosecution appealed, and in November 2021, he was convicted by a higher court, not of abuse of office, but of aiding and abetting in the case of abuse of office. The second instance judgment was not yet final, as it was different from the first instance judgment. Therefore, the Supreme Court’s decision has only now become final.
Golob’s Gen-I energy company was a limitless source of money for Milović in the past
Milović had no less than seven controversial contracts or annexes with the Gen-I energy company when the current Prime Minister, Robert Golob, was the President of the Management Board there. The company VPS Consulting (VPS Svetovanje), which is half-owned by Milović, signed seven contracts or annexes with Gen-I between November 2013 and October 2017, i.e. while it was still headed by Golob. This was also confirmed by the office of Mojca Prelesnik, the Information Commissioner. Last November, the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS) MP Žan Mahnič raised the issue of Milović with a parliamentary question. The SDS MP wanted to know whether the Prime Minister had indeed arranged his security in a different way by amending the Decree on Protection, which transferred the Prime Minister’s security from the police to the Secretariat-General of the Government. He also wanted to know whether Milović was in charge of security.
The governments of Miro Cerar and Marjan Šarec have paid Milović’s migrant care and integration company more than 200,000 euros during their terms of office, the Interior Ministry paid him another 70,000 euros, the energy company Energetika Ljubljana more than 50,000 euros for advice and the like, the public utilities company Komunalno podjetje Velenje paid him 52,000 euros, and even the Slovenian Power Plants Holding is on the list of his financiers with 35,000 euros. In the end, the full list of state transfers to the company VPS Svetovanje, which Milović owns with his wife, shows that Milović has already received more than half a million euros from the state budget.
State transfers to Milović’s company dropped dramatically in 2020, when Marjan Šarec (the Freedom Movement party – Gibanje Svoboda) resigned, and Janez Janša (SDS) took over the government. Namely, the transfers dropped almost to zero. The transfers from Elektro Ljubljana, hidden in the application for the portrayal of the spending of public money Erar, dropped only after Golob’s changes of personnel in the energy sector.
Milović also “protected” Tanja Fajon?
About a year ago, pictures of the current Minister of Foreign and European Affairs and President of the Social Democrats party (Socialni demokrati – SD), Tanja Fajon, and Miloš Njegoslav Milović appeared in the public domain, as they were photographed together, carefree at the seaside, enjoying the rays of sunshine and gazing almost amorously at each other. It is still not clear in what capacity Milović was operating at the time, nor when the picture was taken. Fajon wrote at the time that the photo was taken three years ago in Croatia, when she was diving there with a group of 20 people. Was the convicted criminal Milović one of her companions?!
Golob has already lied about Milović
Miloš Njegoslav Milović first became known to the public when it was made public that he had advised the current Prime Minister Golob and some ministers of the Freedom Movement party, without it being known who was paying him, because Golob claimed in the National Assembly that he was not paid from the state budget, and what is more, Golob even claimed in the National Assembly that he did not know him – which, of course, turned out to be a lie.
Despite Golob’s words, Milović was seen with Marta Kos at a meeting of her supporters when she was still running for President of the Republic as a candidate with the support of the Freedom Movement party.
In the end, however, Golob finally admitted that he knew Milović, saying, “For seven years, he was the head of his department. Of course I know him as such – like I said, I have known him since then.” This was the first time that Golob had been caught in a lie in the National Assembly.
Later, it also turned out that he was lying when he said that Milović had never been his security detail, as even the ousted Director of the Police, Boštjan Lindav, said that Milović had always met him in the corridor before his meetings with the Prime Minister. He said that Milović was present at Golob’s meetings and posed as his head of security.
The fact that Milović had advised Golob on the “new way” of protecting the Prime Minister and had participated in meetings between the police and the Secretariat-General of the Government on this change was one of the reasons for the resignation of the then-Minister of the Interior, Tatjana Bobnar, who had warned of the inadmissibility of such an arrangement within the public administration.
What does this tell us about Golob?
Can you imagine any other Prime Minister of a developed European country bypassing the established procedures and arranging for his own security with a “free-of-charge” convicted criminal who previously earned big bucks as a security guard in a company where the Prime Minister was previously a director? Of course, such a person would resign immediately, but if they did not want to resign, they would be forced to do so by their own ministers and by their own party’s MPs. Unfortunately, such standards do not exist in the Balkans. In Slovenia, there were no headlines about Golob lying that he did not even know his personal security guard, or that the security guard had a clear criminal record, or even that he had been paid in the past by the state-owned company where Golob was previously the Director. What does this tell us about Golob?