“Taxpayers have spent 4 billion euros in the past 25 years for the recovery of the bank. We sold it for 600 million euros. Who is to blame for that? Five years ago, we threw 1,5 billion into the bank. However, we sold it for two and a half times less than we paid for its recovery from bad investments” said Deputy Dr Anže Logar at the extraordinary session of the National Assembly. Since they wanted power and influence in the NLB, Miro Cerar, Karl Erjavec and Dejan Židan, harmed taxpayers by as much as 400 million euros, Logar added. However, nobody was penalized. Moreover, everyone was rewarded with new positions.
The deputies discussed a recommendation, at an extraordinary session, regarding the responsibility of the Government of Miro Cerar and the General Meeting of the Slovenian Sovereign Holding (SSH), which consisted at the time of the SMC, SD and DeSUS parties, for the damage caused to Slovenian taxpayers due to delays from December 2016 to November 2018 in the sale of the majority share in the NLB bank. The recommendation was prepared by the SNS parliamentary group and signed, on request, by members of the SDS party. In the following, we are publishing a presentation of the recommendation made by Dr Anže Logar.
“The NLB was sold, it is no longer majority owned by Slovenia. The newspapers are still being published, the Internet is still working, life is running smoothly, which is unbelievable, given what we have heard several times in this country, and, last but not least, in this House. After all the fuss with the sale of state property and, above all, the NLB, one would think that after the sale of the NLB in Slovenia, there would be a biblical flood. However, there were no protests, no riots, no protest resignations from the super-coalition functions”, said Logar to begin with, adding that this is understandable, as the sale was carried out under the left and extreme left government. “Imagine the reaction in the event that this sale came under the government of Janez Janša. We would have Paris here today. However, the NLB would be sold at a reasonable price, not below the price”.
The Guilty Ones for the 400 Million Worth of Damage are Known – Cerar, Erjavec, Židan!
Logar emphasized that taxpayers have saved the bank with an input of 4 billion euros over the past 25 years. We sold it for 600 million euros. “Who is to blame for that? Five years ago, we threw 1,5 billion into the bank. However, we sold it for two and a half times less than we paid for its recovery from bad investments. To illustrate this with a case from everyday life, which the taxpayers can understand better”, he thus illustrated by an example of a car. “Take it to a car service, it costs you 1,500 euros. Then you sell it for 600 euros after a few months. Which one of you would do such a thing? No one, I believe”.
“Who did this, with hundreds of times higher amounts, who? Miro Cerar, Karl Erjavec and Dejan Židan! Twice”. This happened for the first time in 2015, when the National Investment Strategy was adopted in the National Assembly, which planned a dispersed ownership. Even then, they were warned of the consequences. Logar quoted the words of deputy mag. Marko Pogačnik: “The biggest disappointment in the document itself is definitely the dispersed ownership. With this dispersed ownership, the government of Miro Cerar and the SMC, SD and DeSUS coalition proved that they wanted to continue to have power and influence over the companies and, last but not least, dispersed ownership also means significantly lower purchase prices for the Slovenian state budget”. Logar said that they had warned them back then, however they did not listen. Because they wanted NLB to disperse its ownership by all means, the price we had for NLB was 25% lower. Solely for the purpose of continuing managing the bank, Cerar, Erjavec and Židan have deprived us of 250 million euros or 125 euros per individual, since these three people did not want to sell the bank in the first attempt, when the prices of the banks on the market were 20 percent higher than at the time of the sale, depriving us of an additional 20 percent of the value. So, from the perspective of these two political decisions, Cerar, Erjavec and Židan took away from us around 400 million euros or 200 euros each.
One and the Same Set of Politicians is Throwing Money Out the Window
Logar considered the responsibility of Cerar, Erjavec and Židan: one became the Foreign Minister, the second became the Defense Minister – both state-forming governmental functions – and the third, Židan, became the President of parliament.
Logar concluded: “Dear taxpayers, will you allow them from year to year, from set to set – well, it is the same set after all – the unpunished throwing away of state money? The proposers of this meeting believe that we cannot do this. Therefore, we also suggested that the competent authorities should investigate in this case the political responsibility and the indemnity responsibility of the aforementioned three, which enabled NLB to sell to foreign owners at a significantly lower price”.