Despite vociferous denials, Sinisa Mali, currently Serbia's Finance Minister, owned luxury apartments worth 6.1 million dollars on Bulgaria's Black Sea coast, Crime and Corruption Reporting Network KRIK, confirmed late on Sunday.
In 2015 when the news broke out, Mali was the powerful mayor of Belgrade, and he admitted to owning one apartment in a resort complex there but insisted that his name only appeared on documents connected to 23 other flats because he was assisting a client with a business deal, KRIK and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), said.
KRIK is a member of the OCCRP established in 2006, as an investigative reporting organisation specialised in organised crime and corruption.
However, back then, Mali denied the ownership of the other 23 apartments, insisting his name only appeared on documents because he was assisting a client with a business deal.
KRIK recalled that Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic had defended Mali, a longtime ally, against any suggestion of corrupt dealings.
„I have absolute trust in Minister Sinisa Mali,“ Vucic said earlier this year. „I will remind you of all the lies about him, about 24 apartments in Bulgaria. The politicians who led that campaign lied, the media lied.“
However, the latest report said that „now, six years later, KRIK and OCCRP have uncovered definitive proof that Mali owned the apartments despite denials. The evidence was found in documents from the Pandora Papers, a massive leak of documents from 14 offshore service providers, including one used by Mali.
„The Pandora Papers, a set of millions of documents from offshore corporate service providers, was leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and shared with media partners around the world, including OCCRP. In total, 35 current and former national leaders appear in the leak, alongside 400 officials from nearly 100 countries. Among those names are former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, Montenegrin President Milo Đukanović, and Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba.
The report said that Trident Trust, a provider based in the British Virgin Islands, a notorious offshore haven used by the wealthy to shield their assets from public scrutiny, firstly established two British Virgin Islands companies for Mali: Brigham Holding & Finance Inc. and Etham Invest & Finance Corp.
„Then, Mali’s two companies bought two Bulgarian firms, Erma 11 and Erul 11, which already owned most of the apartments and soon purchased the rest,“ the report said.
Besides, „Nikola Petrovic, a Serbia’s citizen, was the head of the country’s state-owned electricity transmission company. He was also the kum — roughly equivalent to a best man or blood brother — of the country’s autocratic president, Aleksandar Vucic. He became an owner of a British Virgin Islands company, set up in 2016, via Swiss consulting firm Fidinam and Alcogal, the Panamanian law firm.
But when setting up the company, Petrovic never informed Alcogal that he might be considered a politically exposed person despite being so close to the president. Furthermore, his Swiss lawyer specifically told Alcogal that Petrović was not a PEP. However, Alcogal’s due diligence after the formation of the company uncovered his political position and asked for a bank reference letter. Documents show that the Swiss law firm pushed back on requests by Alcogal, offering instead to write the reference letter themselves. Alcogal accepted the offer. Petrović kept the company secret from Serbian officials, never declaring it as required by law with the anti-corruption agency.
Petrovic did not respond to questions.
KRIK added that „Mali was listed as the director of the British Virgin Islands companies, so reporters were previously able to link him to the apartment purchase through property sales records. But because of the islands’ opaque reporting requirements, it was not clear who owned the companies, and therefore the apartments — until now.“
„Documents from the Pandora Papers reveal that Mali was, in fact, the sole shareholder of Brigham Holding & Finance Inc. and Etham Invest & Finance Corp.,“ KRIK discovered.
Mali did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the new revelations.
KRIK and OCCRP found out that the case of the 24 Bulgarian apartments was just one of several suspicious deals involving Mali.
„Over the years, reporters have learned that Mali illegally obtained state-owned land, helped his father privatise Serbia’s state-owned railway company while he worked at the country’s Privatisation Agency, and took lavish vacations despite a relatively low official salary,“ the findings revealed.
The report also said that Serbia’s Anti-Corruption Agency opened a case on Mali’s business in 2015 and found evidence he was involved in several suspicious deals, including one that looked like money laundering. The agency referred the case to the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office, which asked the Administration for the Prevention of Money Laundering to look into the accounts and transactions of Mali, his wife and children, and any companies he owned or worked for.
The Administration later reported detailing multiple suspicious transactions.
„It found that Mali was handling large sums of money well above his official salary. It also found that his lawyer in Bulgaria, Ana Panyotova, was involved in a series of transactions’ without clear logic,’ some of them connected to deals involving apartments on the seaside.“
Despite all this, the Higher Public Prosecutor’s office declined to pursue the case, saying that they saw no evidence of criminal activity.
The report recalled that Mali was promoted to finance minister in 2018.
Early that year, six of the Bulgarian apartments were confiscated or frozen, first by a local bank and then by Bulgarian tax authorities.
„As finance minister, Mali now controls the Administration for the Prevention of Money Laundering. It has not investigated him since he was appointed.“
KRIK said that the Trident Trust told reporters that they were operating within the law and not giving statements about their clients.
Panayotova also did not want to comment. She just said: „I refuse to comment; there have been too many scandals with this,“ and hung up.
Mali did not respond to a call from a KRIK journalist for an interview, nor to detailed questions sent to him.
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