The owner of the company "RUDNAP GROUP", Vojin Lazarević, whose manager was the energy minister of North Macedonia, Sanja Bojinovska, close to the Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski, has a very controversial reputation and his name comes out of the so-called "Panama Papers". This is stated in an investigation by BGNES editor-in-chief Georgi Pashkulev and the head of the International News of BGNES Dimitar Ruskov.
Vojin Lazarević is one of the biggest businessmen in the energy sector not only in Serbia but also in the Western Balkan countries. He has bought electricity from Bulgaria and also had a business in Russia, which was linked to a bank set up to circumvent sanctions imposed on the remnant Yugoslavia of the now-deceased dictator Slobodan Milosevic.
According to Lazarević's official biography, he began his career in his father's law firm, and in 1989 started his own business, founding PIMA Kotor in 1989 and PIMA Belgrade in 1994. In 1998, he was a minister without portfolio in the Montenegrin government, and in 1998-2000 he was an adviser to Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanović. Since 2000, he has been a co-owner of EFT Ltd, UK. In 2003 he privatized the company "RUDNAP" and after leaving EFT Group in 2005 headed his own company "RUDNAP GROUP".
But this is only the obvious part...
Lazarević and Hamović - energy bosses
Vojin Lazarević is famous as one of the biggest businessmen in the energy sector, especially for the scandals related to the electricity trade and the privatisation of the National Savings Fund. According to Insider, he and Vuk Hamović, the son of the Yugoslav People's Army general Radomir Rade Hamović, who is allegedly linked to the Yugoslav secret services, had shares in Wexim Bank, which is discussed in more detail later in the text, where some of the exported money ended up in the 1990s. After 2000, foreign exchange reserves were stored there. By investing state money deposited in Wexim, Lazarević and Hamović became the owners of the largest block of shares in the National Savings Fund through affiliated companies. In 2005-2006, their shares were acquired at a much more expensive price of EUR 41 million by a Greek bank, which bought the National Savings Fund.
Somewhere around that time, the two of them got into the electricity business. They obtained the exclusive right to import and export electricity to Serbia. According to publications in Serbian media, the duo harmed the country's state budget by USD 22 million.
Almost ten years later, the Ministry of Energy brought criminal charges against Lazarević and Hamović on the basis of the report of the anti-corruption team on abuses in the energy sector. Then minister of energy, Zorana Mihajlović, stated that Serbia had suffered hundreds of millions of dollars in damages in deals with their companies.
Lazarevic and Panama Papers
Serbian businessmen are widely represented in the records of Mossack Fonseca, a company based in the offshore tax haven of Panama that helps clients from all over the world avoid audits and taxes.
Details of their activities were found in Panama Papers, an internal data set obtained by the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and more than 100 media partners from 76 countries.
Businessman Vojin Lazarević is also listed in the database. His Serbian company RUDNAP GROUP plc set up a company called Giralia Resources Limited in 2007 in the tax haven of Seychelles, although it is not known what this company is involved in.
Lazarević and the Russian bank Euroaxis set up by Milosević
In the 1990s, a Yugoslav leftover under the leadership of dictator Slobodan Milošević fought a series of bloody ethnic wars against the remaining republics in the disintegrating federation. International sanctions were imposed on Yugoslavia because of Belgrade's brutality during the wars.
To avoid them, Milošević set up the Weksim bank in Russia, and later it was renamed to Euroaxis after his fall from power.
However, due to violations of rules, the bank came into the sight of the Russian authorities. One of its shareholders and a member of the Management Board at the new time was Vojin Lazarević. A BIRN investigation based on leaked records and documents shed light on how he and two other Serbian businessmen diverted funds from it to their own companies between 2012 and 2015.
Vojin Lazarević, Toplica Spasojević and Obrad Sikimić used a double accounting system to evade the Russian Central Bank's scrutiny of the fact that most of the bank's loans - paid from deposits of the National Bank of Serbia (NBS) - went to their own companies, according to the investigation.
In 2016, Euroaxis' license was revoked. Two years later, Russian authorities seized the assets of Lazarević and several other businessmen, including former Serbian ambassador to Moscow Jelica Kurjak and the bank's last president, Ivan Maričić.
The curious thing about Maričić, who took over the financial institution in January 2015 to save it, is that he had previously led Belgrade-based Srpska Banka to bankruptcy.
He later admitted: "You are not supposed to found a bank to collect resources from the financial market and finance your own business." In his view, it is neither normal nor allowed by law to do what the owners of Euroaxis did.
The bank lends to companies controlled by its management. According to the Russian Deposit Insurance Agency, Euroaxis has granted more than 40 loans to 15 different companies, totalling more than €32 million. On the face of it, they have nothing to do with each other, but in reality most of them are linked to the trio of Lazarević, Sikimić and Spasojević. The companies linked to Lazarević have benefited the most, with nine of them receiving 24 loans worth a total of around €20 million.
On a covertly recorded audio tape of one of the final board meetings held in 2015—a desperate attempt to keep the bank from going bankrupt—the three admitted to the crime. Euroaxis owes its customers €17 million. The sale of its central Moscow offices brought in about €6 million. The Gorizont Apartments purchased it. Andrei Matalyga, director of Yantar 96, a business owned by Sergey Mefyedov, who is Artyom Dyumin's business partner, is the owner of the firm. Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, employed Alexei Dyumin as a bodyguard and confidant. | BGNES
