II A STRATEGIC AND FINANCIAL INVESTOR
If the prosecutor and the court want to understand the difference between strategic and financial investors, then we have already completed this procedure today. The prosecutor will give up the procedure because a financial investor is not responsible for the things I am charged with here.
In 2005 one of the companies I owned sold the shares of Delta bank to Italian Banca Intesa San Paolo for 400 million EUR and decided to invest that money in Serbia, namely in two directions:
- The first one was strategic investing. Then came the period of the largest acquisitions for Delta. We invested in agriculture, real estate and retail. We became owners of the production companies Yuhor, Danubius and Florida Bel; of retail chains Pekabeta and C market; of five agricultural estates in Vojvodina and of other companies. Those were our strategic jobs. We invested there, we managed there, and we bore business risks there, including risks of claims and progress.
- The second direction was financial investing. We invested money in order to make money legally and not just to run those companies. That is how we invested in the shares of Merkator, Ikarbus, road maintenance companies, Energoprojekt, NIS and several companies in Montenegro. If we had been able to, we would have bought the shares of General Electric or Coca Cola too: does it mean that we are responsible for the operations of Merkator, Coca Cola or General Electric? Just to make thinks clear, I am not the one who invented financial investing. It exists all over the world and we pay highly our consultants and experts who instruct us about how business is done in the world. So, we invest money and our only risk is whether we will make or lose money. We did not manage there. The same refers to the road maintenance companies.
- Neither my son nor I have ever entered any road maintenance company. We have never been members of the management or administration bodies and we have never recommended or appointed a single member of those bodies so we cannot answer for the business operations of those companies according to any laws, provisions and regulations.
