Slušaj vest

The campaign that Dragan Šolak’s media outlets have been running for years, and which intensified particularly from the moment he was dismissed from the head of the United Group, now more than ever abounds in the dissemination of an enormous number of spins and false information.

These days, the target of this almost criminal practice of self-styled media professionals—whose main journalistic principle is the protection of Dragan Šolak’s wealth and that of his closest associates—alongside the usual target of Aleksandar Vučić, is also Vladimir Lučić, head of Telekom Srbija, as well as the new leadership of the United Group, which was installed after Šolak was dismissed.
The fabrication of articles published by N1 and Nova S, in collusion with the other members of Šolak’s mechanism for destroying competition, is yet further proof that these media outlets were created solely with the aim of protecting the business of Dragan Šolak, whose fundamental rule from the very beginning has been the relentless increase of his wealth at any cost and by any means.
Everything we have witnessed in recent days and weeks is merely confirmation of what Kurir wrote about Šolak and his business in a series of articles back in 2021 and 2022.

At that time, in dozens of articles, we investigated Šolak’s dealings and thoroughly unmasked the way in which this businessman for years, often by dubious means, increased his wealth. As we discovered, Šolak’s business grew through the use of various legal and illegal methods, unfair practices, breaches of law, disloyal competition, spying on rivals, bribing competitors... Read for yourself and be convinced how accurate all the articles we published several years ago were!

In February and March 2021, Kurir published a series of articles HEIST UNDER THE GUISE OF DEMOCRACY AND THE STRUGGLE FOR MEDIA FREEDOM, in which it thoroughly exposed the murky dealings of Dragan Šolak.

In one of the first articles, the documents and findings obtained by Kurir’s team at that time showed that Šolak’s empire was built on numerous speculative, cowboy-like, and even cartel-style operations.

We also established that Šolak’s personal fortune, according to officially documented data on the value of property he owned, exceeded €1.22 billion!

During the investigation, we uncovered that Šolak began his business with pirated discs, profited from the sanctions of the 1990s, attempted to steal the PGP premises in Ljubljana, and was not unfamiliar with the plundering of state property, as shown when he damaged Belgrade Heating Plants by €110 million!

And in 2022, in the series HOW ŠOLAK BECAME THE RICHEST SERB, Kurir continued to investigate the trajectory of this controversial billionaire in the murky waters of Balkan transition.

Šolak’s financial rise began in the 1990s, and on the long path to becoming the richest Serb, Šolak went from a seller of VHS cassettes and discs to the founder of the country’s first cable television company, and eventually to the owner of a conglomerate which held more than one hundred regional media outlets in its portfolio and possessed assets valued at over €3 billion.

Immediately after the collapse of his then-business in Slovenia, Šolak returned to Serbia in 1998, where, together with his brother-in-law Dušan Radosavljević, he founded the company Cable Distribution System (KDS), the precursor of today’s SBB. The strategic turning point in Dragan Šolak’s business career was his partnership with Soros.

Šolak’s unstoppable expansion into the regional market was achieved with the support of major investment funds, when in 2007 the ownership of SBB was taken over by the London-based investment fund “Mid Europa Partners”, in which George Soros was one of the key investors.

After 5 October, the state, Telekom, and PTT handed over the market without a fight to Šolak’s SBB, and because the state-owned competitors of SBB were late to embrace the internet and cable television, Šolak’s SBB pushed Telekom out of the big cities in Serbia.
In the continued expansion of his empire, Šolak pursued personal enrichment through the illegal use and usurpation of public resources, and his company SBB unlawfully drew electricity from communal and private meters in residential buildings, with the cost of powering the company’s network being paid by the tenants of those buildings without their knowledge.

And while formally advocating for a free market, Šolak’s SBB applied a wide range of methods—from deceiving the relevant regulatory bodies, to practices amounting to unfair competition, and even to cartel agreements prohibited by law, whose sole aim was the destruction of the business of Telekom Srbija.

How thoroughly SBB and other companies owned by Dragan Šolak devised mechanisms for securing excess profit was also demonstrated by the case of the Unifi network, from which the controversial Serbian billionaire derived direct financial benefit, while the operating costs of this network were passed onto users.

Dragan Šolak and his companies were particularly noted for evading payment of copyright fees, and the turning point for the United Group was the adoption of media laws in Serbia in 2014.

In order to achieve his goals and launch TV N1, Dragan Šolak had to ensure that media laws were changed to allow distributors to also be content producers. And, in order to avoid paying profit tax to the Serbian state, Šolak fictitiously sold the cable operator SBB to himself as many as three times.

Beyond the obvious fact that during the formal buyouts of SBB Dragan Šolak simulated actual ownership changes in his main company in Serbia, the true reason for doing so becomes apparent only when one traces the flow of money used to finance this operation. Namely, from documentation obtained by Kurir’s editorial staff at that time, it is clear that all these fake buyouts were financed with SBB’s own funds, thereby creating, through the abuse of numerous regulations, a scheme for siphoning money out of Serbia in the form of fictitious expenses.

As Kurir wrote in 2022, Šolak’s business empire consisted of more than one hundred companies, with the number constantly changing due to the founding of new ones and the closure of those already used up. Companies within this network regularly conducted mutual financial transactions, which enabled Šolak to optimise tax payments and, through related parties, partially conceal his ownership in some firms.

According to the scheme of companies linked to Šolak, his entire business system was organised as a complex structure of numerous firms in which Šolak appeared as co-owner together with the funds BC Partners and KKR (until January 2012).

In the aforementioned series of articles, Kurir wrote that irrefutable evidence had emerged in public that in at least three cases Dragan Šolak and Dragan Đilas had joint business ventures, and there are indications that they actively collaborate on a number of other projects. Direct Media was mentioned, and according to officially available data, Direct Media was founded in April 2001 by Mlađan Đorđević, Egon Franičević, and Milan Krstić, only for Đilas to purchase it in 2004, through his company Multikom Group, for $10,000.

Despite the controversial business practices of Šolak’s companies—which included non-transparent ownership hidden behind offshore firms, cartel-style market divisions, and the running of negative media campaigns against business rivals—the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has stood steadily by the side of the controversial Serbian billionaire almost from the beginning of his business, holding an ownership stake in the United Group since 2004.

Šolak secured the long-term support of this financial institution for his companies both by drawing the bank into his business through official partnership, and through concealed ties with certain EBRD managers

Although for all these years he managed to remain practically a faceless figure to the Serbian public, and someone who conducted most of his business below the radar, Dragan Šolak was eventually brought into the open, and as the first Serbian euro-billionaire at that.