By: Peter Jančič (Spletni časopis)
In the online newspaper, I pointed out that the revamped Erar application shows that the company owned by the Prime Minister, Robert Golob’s Star Solar, has an open account with BANCA DI CIVIDALE S.P.A. in Italy.
This information was already available on Ajpes. The account was opened in 2019 when the official owner and director of the company Star Solar was still Robert Golob’s former wife, Jana Nemec Golob. This detail is notable not only because the Prime Minister claimed he had no accounts abroad and that in Romania, Raiffeisen Bank opened one in his name in 2018 through identity theft – something he only discovered during the 2022 elections – but also because the bank where his company holds an account features an interesting director linked to Golob: Lidija Glavina. Furthermore, online records in Italy about Glavina’s career omit the fact that she was also employed at the Italian branch of GEN-I, where she was hired by Golob in 2019. The publicly available records in Italy regarding Glavina are as follows:
Glavina was appointed to the top of the Slovenian Sovereign Holding (SDH) in 2017 by the government of Miro Cerar, despite lacking clear qualifications. Simply put, she had no serious credentials. Her position also granted her a supervisory role at the state-owned Telekom. However, she was removed from SDH leadership during the government of Marjan Šarec. The SDH supervisory board decided on her departure and the manner in which it would happen at an emergency session on March 27th, 2019, when the then-chair of the supervisory board, Igor Kržan, along with Janez Vipotnik, Duško Kos, and Karmen Dietner, approved an agreement for the early termination of her term as SDH president. Officially, she resigned voluntarily. Unofficially, she was forced to step down due to the change in government, as the minority government was taken over by Šarec. The agreement obliged the supervisory board to keep Glavina employed as an advisor to the management until May 31st, 2020, with a salary equivalent to that of the SDH president – €10,975 per month – along with benefits such as a company car, fuel expenses, phone, laptop, and office space.
The agreement between Glavina and the supervisory board also included a clause stating that if she found another job in 2019, she would be entitled to severance pay in a lump sum, equal to the unpaid salaries for the remainder of her employment period. The reason for this arrangement became clear three months later, in July 2019, when SDH announced that Glavina was no longer employed with them and that she “was entitled to severance pay equivalent to the remaining unpaid salaries until the end of that year”. According to the agreement signed on July 15th, 2019, she received €5,705 in salary for 12 days of advisory work for SDH in July 2019 and an additional €54,774 in severance pay for “unpaid salaries until the end of the year”.
Two weeks after the announcement that Glavina was no longer employed at SDH and that she had received severance pay, it was revealed that she had secured a job at the state-owned company GEN-I, which was then led by Golob – specifically, as later emerged, at its Italian subsidiary. In summary, after resigning as president of the management board of a state-owned enterprise midway through her term, she was quickly hired as an advisor with a salary equivalent to that of the president, then transferred to a state-owned company under SDH’s oversight. Salaries for top executives at GEN-I, including Golob’s, were up to five times higher than hers at SDH, yet she still received a severance package from SDH amounting to €54,774 for switching jobs.
Lidija Glavina remained a director at GEN-I for quite some time, as evidenced by the company’s 2023 annual report.
The severance package she received from SDH exceeded Golob’s monthly gross salary at the time – wages that prompted the Ministry of Economic Development to initiate misdemeanour proceedings. Golob’s bonuses (and those of his colleagues) far exceeded the limits set by the law introduced by Matej Lahovnik for directors of state-owned enterprises. In theory, Golob could have been required to return the money, but this never happened. Large companies with ample funds for lawyers and influence over the government tend to find loopholes in Slovenia’s complex legal system. GEN-I stated that the reason legal limits did not apply to them was a decision made by the Ministry of Economic Development during Miro Cerar’s government, under the leadership of Zdravko Počivalšek, in 2015. This decision exempted Golob and GEN-I from the restrictions imposed on state-owned company directors, as the company was allegedly considered private.