265 foreigners have registered residence in the building at Tovarniška ulica 6 in Krško, of which 108 are permanent and 157 are temporary residents. As confirmed for the Moje Posavje portal by the Krško Administrative Unit, foreigners are registered at the address of the company B-A-Z Dejanović, which according to the Surveying and Mapping Authority of the Republic of Slovenia (Gurs) owns an apartment with 85 square meters of living space and as well as a bar.
We wanted to check with the company itself what the reason for having so many foreigners registered at one address is, but the only company number published in official records does not exist.
The majority owner of the company B-A-Z Dejanović is a company Accounting financial services and consulting T&T AOP, hence we wanted to check the reasons for the registration of such a large number of foreigners with them as well. Their director, Aleksander Vegelj, told us that he had to ask the director of the B-A-Z Dejanović company, Ljubo Dejanović, about the matter, and promised to send us the answers yesterday. However, yesterday afternoon he instructed us to ask Dejanović ourselves, but despite our request, he refused to share Dejanović’s contact information.
The facility cannot accommodate such a large number of people
Since the company B-A-Z Dejanović is registered in the field of construction, trade and catering as well as a landlord, we might conclude that it has so many foreigners registered because it needs construction workers, but this is unlikely. According to Gurs, two parts of a building are listed at the address Tovarniška 6; in the lower part a food catering establishment is registered and in the upper part an apartment. There are two more buildings on the land (behind the main building). One is registered as a warehouse and the other is stated to not be a building. Records in Gurs also show that the cadastral entry on the parcel number at this address is not yet completed, nor is the parcel, which should have been take care of by the owner.
It is clear that the building at Tovarniška 6 cannot accommodate such a large number of people (265). Additionally, according to official records, the company only has one employee, and last year had a turnover of 85 thousand euros (64 thousand the year before), which means that it is a relatively small company.
The Krško Administrative Unit is turning a blind eye
The Krško Administrative Unit claims that an administrative unit does not have the authority to introduce procedures for verifying the authenticity of residence registration for people living at landlords. They also did not specifically check why so many people are registered at Tovarniška 6. However, in the last three years, they have conducted procedures for determining the actual residence of 12 people at the mentioned address due to filed reports, but they do not share their findings. They also stated that the landlord can register any number of people, but he/she is obliged to only register people who actually reside at the address and to deregister them after the completion of the accommodation.
From this we could conclude that the administrative unit does not have enough leverage for more decisive action when it comes to possible fictitious registration of residences, but such a conclusion is contradicted by the case of the Maribor Administrative Unit. This week (after the Prime Minister Janez Janša spoke in Parliament about the controversial nature of mass fictitious residence registrations of foreigners in Slovenia), they introduced an internal control procedure in the field of residence registration in Maribor. They will check all addresses, where more than 20 people have registered at. According to the first inquiries, two addresses are currently being investigated – for one they found that 62 people were registered on 97.6 square meters of living space, and on the second 157 people were registered on 99 square meters.
Last week, Maribor criminal investigators detained a woman who, with the help of two family members, falsely reported a large number of foreigners or third-country nationals, especially from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Serbia, to three addresses in the vicinity of Maribor since 2018. All the registered people needed temporary registration of residence in the European Union in order to obtain work permits.
According to experts, fictitious residence registrations in Slovenia serve as a springboard for work either in Slovenia or in the EU, as registration of residence in the EU makes it easier to obtain work permits and ensures they are entitled to certain social transfers.