By: Tanja Brkić / Nova24tv
While the Golob government is launching affairs with Russian spies to the Slovenian public, his affair is being dealt with abroad. The pieces of the puzzle of Golob’s financial affair are slowly coming together. This time, on the Serbian television show “Dobro jutro Srbijo” (Good Morning Serbia), the case was discussed by the well-known Serbian journalist Dragoslav Vujićič, a former member of the military Counterintelligence Service or KOS of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Ljuban Karan; and the journalist Luka Perš, who has been working on the affair since the beginning of last year, was an exclusive guest. In addition to other interesting facts, Vujićič also revealed that a 250-page criminal indictment has been filed against the Balkan energy mafia in Germany.
In the programme, Serbian journalist Dragoslav Vujićic and Ljuban Karan, a former member of the military Counterintelligence Service of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, shared some interesting information that slowly built up the whole picture of the allegedly controversial business practices of the Slovenian state-owned energy company Geni-I in the Western Balkans. At the time of the controversial deals being concluded, the company was managed by the current Prime Minister, Robert Golob, and Igor Koprivnikar, the company’s former financial manager. The former member of the Counterintelligence Service claims that this affair would not have happened without the presence of foreign intelligence services and that he is not surprised by the actions or role of Kosovo’s Ambassador Martin Berishaj, because this is something diplomats do everywhere – they use their diplomatic status to transfer goods or money from country to country. In the background of the Gen-I-Berishaj story, there is also the IFIMES institute, which, alongside Bakhtyar Aljaf, is headed by Zijad Bečirović, a director linked to the left-wing political option.
Perš, as an exclusive guest on the show, explained that a subsidiary of Gen-I, at a registered address in Belgrade, Serbia, transferred just over 3.5 million euros of Slovenian taxpayers’ money to the company MB Consulting in Kosovo and Montenegro in 2015-2016, after which Berishaj withdrew almost 3.5 million euros in cash from both his bank accounts in Montenegro and Kosovo in several withdrawals between 2019 and 2022. In addition to all this, almost 50 thousand euros were transferred in 2019 to the aforementioned company for services already rendered. All the money is said to have ended up with the Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti‘s close confidants. What was also shocking was what journalist Vujićič said, who revealed the information that a 250-page criminal indictment has been filed against the Balkan energy mafia in Germany. The Prava web portal also revealed the following in one of its articles on the exposure of the electro casino gambling of Golob’s boys with the business mentality of the blue boy from 119 Dunajska Street in Ljubljana: “We wrote that in one of the European countries, a criminal case has been filed against the so-called electro mafia of the Western Balkans. We even wrote that it was written in 250 pages. If the information from foreign intelligence services is correct, we could be talking about a figure of FIVE BILLION euros! That’s how much taxpayers’ money from the citizens of the Western Balkan countries has gone up in smoke over the past twenty years,” writes Luka Perš on the web portal Prava.
Perš has long warned about the suspicious siphoning off of Slovenian taxpayers’ money in the Gen-I energy company, but after a detailed follow-up in 2022, he revealed from his sources that Robert Golob was in the pre-trial proceedings in the then-National Bureau of Investigations (Nacionalni preiskovalni urad – NPU) for the sale of the “Elektro energija” company – a subsidiary of Elektro Ljubljana under the leadership of Andrej Ribič, the head of the electoral headquarters of Golob’s Freedom Movement party (Gibanje svoboda), and now also a member of the board of the state-owned company for Slovenian highways, DARS – to Gen-I. When he came to power, he immediately replaced the Director of the National Bureau of Investigation – what could possibly be the reason? When asked where the taxpayers’ money went, the Balkan media suspicions arise that some of it was transferred directly from Koprivnikar’s Ljubljana office to two companies protected by the diplomatic immunity of Kosovo’s ambassador to Croatia, Martin Berishaj, who is a close friend of Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Albin Kurti.
The Prava web portal, following Karan’s hint of cooperation with the intelligence services, wondered whether the entire Gen-I financing operation was controlled by Belgrade, precisely by the circle of confidants close to the diplomat Borut Shukljet, who passed away last year. According to Karan, this is an old tactic of the intelligence services and it is easiest to compromise politicians in high positions in an affair such as the current Gen-I-Belgrade-Martin Berishaj affair. As the influential institute in the Western Balkans, IFIMES, was also spotted in the story, the Prava web portal also hinted at an influential diplomatic-intelligence network from the network of diplomat Šukljeta.
After the publication of the information about the money that disappeared, Perš was contacted by Janez Pogorelec, a well-known Slovenian lawyer and senior political representative of the New Slovenia party (Nova Slovenija – NSi), asking him to reveal which country it was that allegedly filed the criminal complaint. After the revelation that it was Germany, Vujićić’s following words are both surprising and great food for thought. “This is a classic case of corruption. This is just one part. Slovenians are known for this. The other part is Germany. First Slovenian, then German. We know how it works. In fact, Kurti was created out of these very forces. A company registered in Belgrade, Gen-I Belgrade. There was money. This all works according to a system that is familiar. A Slovenian company with a subsidiary in Belgrade is illegally financing the state of Kosovo and Metohija, and our intelligence services know this.”
You can find out more in the Serbian television show mentioned above.