Paradise Papers: Serbian Minister and businessmen implicated

BELGRADE (Patria) - In over 13 million documents under the name "Paradise Papers", which are seriously shaking the world, there are also names of several people from Serbia, announced the Belgrade portal Krik.

The documents reveal the businesses of close associates of world leaders, including US President Donald Trump, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, the British Queen, famous music stars like Madonna and Bono Vox, large corporations like Nike and Apple, as well as one of the founders of Microsoft.

In essence, the "Paradise Papers" reveal the connections of more than hundreds of world politicians and businessmen with offshore companies and deepen the discoveries of last year's project "Panama Papers", when 11.5 million documents were leaked from one of the most famous agencies for establishing offshore firms.

Among the names from Serbia mentioned are the betting company Meridian, which launched its online betting business in Malta in 2007 at a time when it was prohibited in Serbia, reported the Network for Investigating Crime and Corruption (KRIK) today, which worked on the project. Meridian betting shops in Serbia are run by the domestic company Joker Games, founded in 2001, which is owned by Aleksandar Milovanović, Snežana Božović, and Zoran Milošević.

As stated in the KRIK press release, the national assembly member and member of the Serbian Progressive Party, Vladimir Đukanović, worked for that company. At the end of December 2012, after the SNS came to power, Milošević and Đukanović were appointed members of the three-member Assembly of the public enterprise State Lottery of Serbia.

General Jovan Čeković, the long-time director of the state-owned arms trading company "Jugoimport SDPR", also appears in the "Paradise Papers". He is the owner of the Maltese company "Jomil Malta Limited", founded in September 2007, which is part of a wider network of "Jomil" companies registered in Serbia, Montenegro, France, Congo, Cyprus, Malta, and Angola, and managed by Čeković and his daughter Milica.

Former general and arms dealer Radoš Rubaković also does business in Malta and is the owner of the company "Cofis Export-Import co. Limited", founded in 2008. In 2010, his company established a representative office in Serbia. Rubaković owns the arms trading company of the same name in Serbia, "Cofis", registered in 1992. He also runs the same business in Montenegro.

Controversial businessman Bogdan Rodić, whose partners included close associates of drug lord Darko Šarić, owns two offshore companies registered in Malta, according to leaked documents from the "Paradise Papers" project.

After becoming the Vice-President of the National Assembly in 2012, Popović conceived the idea of reorganizing his wealth through a complex network of offshore companies controlled by a trust from Hong Kong and two firms from the Isle of Man. However, the law firm "Appleby", which Popović intended to engage, conducted an investigation and discovered various controversies related to Popović's business dealings, particularly those in Russia.