{"id":19954,"date":"2016-09-29T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-29T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/pink-received-at-least-e-7-million-in-loans-from-the-state\/"},"modified":"2019-09-04T18:29:40","modified_gmt":"2019-09-04T16:29:40","slug":"pink-received-at-least-e-7-million-in-loans-from-the-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/pink-received-at-least-e-7-million-in-loans-from-the-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Pink received at least \u20ac 7 million in loans from the state"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn his letter sent to George Soros<\/strong> in August this year, \u017deljko Mitrovi\u0107<\/strong>, the owner of Pink International Company<\/em>, specified that the amount of almost \u20ac4 million, allegedly paid by Soros’s Open Society Fund<\/em> to non-governmental organizations in Serbia, would be sufficient to build 40 schools, 120 dispensaries or 10 hospitals.
\n\t
\n\tHowever, Mitrovi\u0107 did not mention what the state could have built for almost \u20ac7 million, i.e. the amount granted to his company by the state Export Credit and Insurance Agency<\/em> (AOFI) in the form of a loan.
\n\t
\n\tReports obtained by the Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia<\/em> (CINS) from Treasury Administration reveal that, during the single month of March this year, Pink International Company<\/em> was granted almost \u20ac3.5 million. The payment was booked under \u201cshort-term loans\u201d – an entry covering several payments received by Pink within the last two years. Thus the amounts surpassing \u20ac3.5 million were paid to Pink in 2015, and \u20ac120,000 in 2014.
\n\t
\n\tMore than \u20ac9,300 was paid to Pink in February this year, this time being booked as \u201cother investments\u201d. 
\n\t
\n\tThe above mentioned amounts shed a new light on the financial support the state was providing to Pink<\/em> through AOFI, not excluding the possibility that the amounts may be even higher. AOFI also used to issue guarantees to Pink<\/em> which, however, cannot be detected in the reports produced by Treasury Administration.
\n\t
\n\tAccording to previous agreements published by CINS, the amount of a single guarantee issued in favor of AIK Bank<\/em> was \u20ac2.5 million. This guarantee agreement was signed on 8 August 2014.
\n\t
\n\tIn practice this means that the state, namely AOFI, helped Pink<\/em> by giving a guarantee for their business. If Pink<\/em> would not meet their contractual obligations \u2013 for example, not repaying the loan to the bank – the guarantee would be activated and the bank would draw the money from AOFI\u2019s account.
\n\t
\n\tThis was actually the case with the Smederevo based factory \u201c\u017delezara<\/em>\u201d (now Hesteel Serbia Iron & Steel<\/em>), which did not meet its contractual obligations to the banks, so AOFI had to pay almost $44 million. Although \u201c\u017delezara<\/em>\u201d was to return this amount to AOFI, Serbian Government requested AOFI to make a write-off of these receivables.
\n\t
\n\tAOFI refuses to explain their business with Pink
\n\t
\n\tDuring 2014 Pink<\/em> was listed at Tax Administration as one of the largest text debtors. At the moment of signing the guarantee agreement in favor of AIK Bank<\/em>, a postponed payment of a portion of the loan had not yet been approved. Therefore, it remains unclear how this company fulfilled AOFI\u2019s condition that their clients must be free of any tax debts.
\n\t
\n\tAnother agreement the CINS had already written about was signed on 10 December 2014, when \u017deljko Mitrovi\u0107<\/strong>, the owner of Pink International Company<\/em> and Dejan Vukoti\u0107<\/strong>, director of AOFI, arranged for Pink<\/em> to be granted a loan worth \u20ac1.4 million. The agreement enabled financing of contracts between Pink <\/em>and the companies BH Telecom<\/em> from Sarajevo and MTEL<\/em> from Podgorica.
\n\t
\n\tSince last December AOFI has been refusing to submit to the CINS documents referring to their agreements with Pink<\/em>, as well as information on their other clients, despite having a legal obligation to do so. Although almost ten months have passed since then, access to information is still denied.
\n\t
\n\tActing upon a complaint, Commissioner for Information of Public Importance issued a decision in favor of CINS, punishing AOFI twice with a total fine of RSD200,000. The Commissioner requested from Serbian Government to ensure execution of the his decision, namely to make AOFI submit the information.
\n\t
\n\tYet, until the present moment, the Government have neither reacted to any of such Commissioner\u2019s requests, nor have they responded to CINS inquiry referring to this issue.
\n\t
\n\tOn several occasions during the previous months, as well as immediately before publishing this story, the CINS journalists requested an interview with the director of AOFI. However, AOFI neither agreed to the interview, nor did they answer the questions sent by e-mail.
\n\t
\n\t\u017deljko Mitrovi\u0107 also refused to talk.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

\n\tThe story has been produced under an EU funded grant, awarded in the Media Programme 2014. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the EU.
\n\t<\/em>\"\"  \"\"<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From June 2014 until January 2016, the Export Credit and Insurance Agency (AOFI) granted somewhat more than \u20ac7 million in loans to Pink International Company owned by \u017deljko Mitrovi\u0107. Out of this amount, as many as almost \u20ac3.5 million were granted in March this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1123,"featured_media":17842,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1578,1492,1587],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-financing-the-media","category-investigative-stories","category-public-money","ciTrackContent"],"acf":[],"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/1475064826~~Ilustracija.png","author_additional":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1123"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19954"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22281,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19954\/revisions\/22281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}