ARE THEY PLOTTING A STRIKE AGAINST BC PARTNERS? Šolak with N1 editors in a photo taken immediately after the dismissal
Kurir has come into possession of a photograph showing the founder of United Group, Dragan Šolak, in the company of his most loyal editors, which, according to our well-informed source, was taken immediately after Šolak was removed from the position of Chairman of the company’s Advisory Board.
The photograph shows: Dragan Šolak (centre, in a red jacket), Programme Director of N1 Serbia Igor Božić (to Šolak’s right), Programme Director of N1 Croatia Tihomir Ladišić (to Šolak’s left), Programme Director of N1 Bosnia and Herzegovina Amir Zukić (far left) and Editor-in-Chief of N1 Slovenia Katja Šeruga (next to Božić).
According to our information, Šolak gathered this group immediately after the decision of BC Partners, the majority owner of United Group, to remove him from the position of Chairman of the Advisory Board, when the CEO of United Group, Viktoriya Boklag, was also dismissed. The dismissal in fact revealed the nature of the conflict between Šolak and BC Partners. Namely, Šolak had sued his majority partner, the investment fund BC Partners, over an allegedly unpaid €200 million bonus which he claims is owed to him following the sale of SBB.
“All his main media people across the different countries are here, and he gathered them to make a plan of attack on BC Partners. All of it over champagne. Šolak wanted to take on his former business partners, and for such matters he always engages his media machinery. These are the most loyal and most agile of Šolak’s associates through whom all of his smear campaigns in the media are always run. In Serbia that’s Igor Božić, in Croatia Ladišić, in Bosnia and Herzegovina Zukić, and so on. Here, they all received their assignments for the strike against BC Partners,” our source explains.
This photograph, and what we have learned lies behind it, explains a great deal about the current activities of the media outlets from the United Group portfolio, particularly those in Serbia where Šolak still pulls the strings through his director, Aleksandra Subotić.
Šolak has clearly launched the final defence of his system for siphoning money out of this company, and he is doing so through a handful of the most loyal people in these media. At present, the main task of N1 and Nova S is to conduct a campaign portraying Aleksandra Subotić to the public as a great defender of press freedom in Serbia.
However, every attempt to present her as a respected businesswoman and a person of integrity has failed, since she comes from the show-business milieu, known for her flamboyant lifestyle, driving a luxury Bentley and owning companies in Panama and Malta. It has been revealed that those very private companies were used by Aleksandra Subotić to siphon money from the United Group system.
As revealed by the General Director of Telekom Srbija, Vladimir Lučić, the domestic company, after acquiring Net TV, came across fictitious contracts, and the money trail leads to her firms.
“When we took over Net TV, we found a fictitious contract through which a company owned by Aleksandra Subotić, who had companies in Panama and later moved them to Malta, had in effect been siphoning off hundreds of thousands and millions of euros from Net TV since 2013,” Lučić stated, adding that he believes those contracts are the key to the whole panic.