By: Luka Perš / Nova24tv
Why do the left wing opposition parties want to prevent the establishment of a demographic fund with a referendum? The answer is right in front of you, as all political players on the left are slaves to the business interests of the president of Modra zavarovalnica, Borut Jamnik. “Jamnik’s octopus is firmly rooted in politics and state-owned enterprises. In this way, they control the cash flows from state-owned companies through media agencies to political parties, which also use this money to ensure their success in elections. And when they break into the government, they ensure the survival of Jamnik’s octopus with the acquired political influence. In doing so, they ensure the benefit and financial survival from the taxpayers’ property to all the individuals involved. The circle is thus closed,” wrote the editorial board of Portalplus and Luka Mesarič in 2015.
The left wing opposition does not miss opportunities to support important state projects. One of them is the establishment of a demographic fund and a demographic office. The processes were actively started by the DeSUS party during Cerar’s government and continued during Šarec’s government. During the time of the previous government, the then coalition partners SD and SAB actively supported the establishment of a demographic fund. Today, they switched sides again and demanded a referendum.
In the past, we revealed the tentacles of the president of the Association of Supervisors of Slovenia and the first husband of the para-state Modra zavarovalnica of Borut Jamnik, who would lose all capital and political power with the new law. This network is being defended by members of KUL, or in other words, “our experts” manage state property wisely, whereas “Janšism” supporters always only care about the sale of state property, which is another spin sold to you by the media, for which a survey by the Faculty of Media found that as many as 90 percent of them are ideologically drawn to the left.
The political class of the left will once again play a dirty media game for its capital nephews, as Borut Jamnik has been called several times in the past. For the price of two million euros, as much as the referendum costs, they are ready to do everything to ensure that the structures of the transitional left will still have significant control over state property. Moreover, the statements of the leaders of the KUL parties indicate that they are concerned with protecting old interests. There has been a lot of talk in the past about the demographic fund. The current government has taken the establishment of a demographic fund and a demographic office as one of the priorities of the current mandate. It is the same with the planned long-term care law that previous left wing governments promised, but have never taken action.
KUL has revealed that they would rather continue to help the economic elites of the transitional left than retirees!
The entire debate around the Demographic fund was illustrated by Prime Minister Janez Janša in an interview for Demokracija. “Let me point out that demography is one of the fundamental challenges of an aging society, which is why it is important to bring the fund to life as soon as possible. The proposed law is already ready. The difference between our current government and its three predecessors is that we are not threshing over old straw, but we are cooperating, looking for solutions, planning, and taking action. And we are proving that Slovenia can do it. The difference is also that the mainstream media portrayed the threshing over old straw as Potemkin’s rich harvest, and our full and effective action as mistakes,” he emphasised.
We can only agree with that. We found a message from the Association of Pensioners’ Associations of Slovenia from 2018 on the Internet, in which they threatened to submit the law on the demographic fund to the National Assembly. In the text entitled Why we need a demographic fund, they argued that Slovenia needs it to create the necessary social and economic dynamics in a rapidly aging society, and at the same time represents a guarantee of providing funds for times of high pension needs. They have also had such a fund for a long time in France, where it is worth 36 billion euros. By this time, a lot of state property had already gone, as it was the left wing governments that carried out privatisation with their foreign financial branches abroad. In doing so, they maintained an influence on domestic politics and the economy. A textbook example of this is the sale of state silver to the York and Apollo funds, and to suspicious Balkan businessmen such as Miodrag Kostič.
However, the rulers of the media space will do everything to ensure that the realisation of the demographic fund under the current government does not take place under any circumstances. This can be clearly seen in the article in Dnevnik newspaper titled Levica, LMŠ, SD, and SAB filed an initiative for a consultative referendum on the demographic fund. “The fund will have power over recruiting in all companies where the state has a majority, including, for example, the Slovenian Press Agency (STA) and Modra zavarovalnica,” the words of Luka Mesec were summarised, proving that the majority media space will play another dirty game. In this case, in favour of maintaining the political and business network of the president of Modra zavarovalnica Borut Jamnik.
Borut Jamnik is an octopus of the Slovenian para-economy
Borut Jamnik built his influence and power on Kapitalska družba, Telekom Slovenije, and the Association of Slovenian Supervisors. Thus, in 2015, Portalplus wrote that Kapitalska družba Slovenije made it possible for Jamnik to secure the mandate of the president of Modra zavarovalnica permanently. The statute of this insurance company is characterised by the provision that its sole owner – KAD – does not have a majority on the supervisory board. He was assisted by former influential behind-the-scenes members of the business network of the transitional left, Bachtiar Djalil, and Anja Strojin Štampar, who at the time held the position of a member of the management board of the Slovenian State Holding.
One of the central roles in protecting Jamnik’s role in Modra zavarovalnica is played by trade unionist Branimir Štrukelj. He sits on the supervisory board as a representative of the insured. Bachitar Djalil, Roman Jerman, and dr. Janez Prašnikar also sit in it as representatives of shareholders. In addition to Štrukelj, the representatives of the insured are also represented by Bojan Zupančič and Marko Cvetko. It is something unique with state ownership when the owner does not have the option of co-deciding on the property for which he is responsible. However, as they wrote on Portalplus some lawyers claimed that this was inconsistent with the Companies Act.
According to experts, Jamnik also acted very comfortably as the chairman of the supervisory board of Telekom Slovenije. He was assisted with this by the former director of Petrol Tomaž Berločnik, former member of the Management Board of Abanka Matej Golob Metzelej, and Gregor Golobič’s personnel, Adolf Zupan. At the time, they became supervisors despite the fact that the state, as the owner, had not had voting rights for three years and could not manage Telekom. Businessman Darij Južna helped them with this, as his Perspektiva owns 1.5 percent of the shares, which he bought in unison for a 207-million-euro loan from Slovenian state-owned banks. Jamnik mainly used the services of Telekom’s Planet TV, which in the past was one of media outlets of the left wing media space. In the past, the situation was similar to that of Telekom in two other large state-owned companies, Petrol and Zavarovalnica Triglav, where the state did not have voting rights and the boys of Jamnik’s network were able to further rule peacefully.
Borut Jamnik was very well remembered by former Prime Minister Marjan Šarec in the affair Kralj. At that time, Kralj called Jamnik’s confidante and executive director of the Association of Supervisors of Slovenia, Irena Prijović, if she could arrange for Igor Šoltes to take the position of director on the Gazette. Prijović skilfully used Kralj’s reckless move for a political-media attack. However, one of the closest players in Jamnik’s network only informed the Slovenian public that Borut Jamnik’s network was inviolable.
In the past, Borut Jamnik supervised all supervision as the president of the Association of Supervisors of Slovenia. Now the president of ZNS is Gorazd Podbevšek, former chairman of the NLB’s supervisory board during Cerar’s government. Interestingly, Jamnik’s association has in the past been financially supported by Sava, Petrol, Zavarovalnica Triglav, SDH, DUTB, Mercator, NKBM, HSE, Slovenske železnice, DARS and other state-owned companies. So we can only wonder why hundreds of millions of euros of taxpayer money have disappeared in most of these former state-owned companies. Many supervisors from Jamnik’s circle have taken positions on the supervisory board of Slovenian banks and large state-owned companies, which in the past have been renovated by taxpayers. According to Mesarič, Borut Jamnik imposed the status of a “licensed supervisor”, which was one of the main requirements in the selection of supervisors during the previous left wing governments. But with this, Jamnik built an elitist alliance in the management of state property.