Lex Agrokor – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Pot Calls Kettle Black – Agrokor Corruption And Political Wile In Croatia

November 8, 2017 by inavukic 8 Comments

Agrokor’s owner Ivica Todoric,
leaves Westminster Magistrates Court in London,
Britain November 7, 2017.
Photo: REUTERS/Simon Dawson

High corruption risks and practices, political patronage and nepotism, and inefficient bureaucracy rolled over from former communist days are among the challenges that Croatia has not truly dealt with yet. To deal with that lustration would be an absolute essential. Corruption and bribery are especially prevalent in the judiciary, public procurement, and the building and construction sector. While the primary legal framework regulating corruption and bribery is contained in the Criminal Code and the Corporate Criminal Liability Act, which make individuals and companies criminally liable for corrupt practices including active and passive bribery, money laundering and abuse of functions. Facilitation payments are prohibited, and gifts may be considered illegal depending on their value or intent. The mechanisms and practice of policing and monitoring compliance with the relevant legislation is practically non-existent. Hence, the road to what is there today with the Agrokor concern – too late to save the company or the livelihood of tens of thousand employees.

Media is running flaming hot in Croatia and abroad regarding the Tuesday 7 November corruption and fraud charges arrest at London Met Police of Ivica Todoric, majority owner of Agrokor business concern whose plummeting towards bankruptcy has also been threatening to bankrupt the country as a whole. One wonders, though, how much of this concentrated hype against Todoric has been designed to hide away from the media spotlight and responsibility of those not related to Todoric family or Agrokor staff. How many in the current and past governments, how many currently sitting in the Croatian Parliament have had their fingers in the Agrokor pie since its foundation during the time of former communist Yugoslavia.

How much of this concentrated media and government effort against the Todoric clan (however justified under law and justice) is in effect a ploy to save the government from falling! Friday 10 November is bound to be a day of upheaval and patience generally running very thin as the yet another vote (in about 18 months’ time span) of no confidence in the government jumps onto the agenda for the day’s proceedings. Reportedly the opposition Social Democrats are seeking a vote of no confidence against the HDZ- led government.

As both Social Democrats/SDP and Croatian Democratic Union/HDZ have held government power in Croatia since independence from communist Yugoslavia and, many of their leading individual powerful members had held positions of power in the former communist regime, which institutionalised corruption and theft in that country, one truly cannot trust that Social Democrats’ motives are noble in this. How many thieves and corrupt individuals are they trying to hide, one wonders.

Croatia’s richest businessman Ivica Todoric, the founder and owner biggest private food and retail company, the drowning Agrokor that’s been shaking Croatia’s economy for months, threatening to bankrupt the country, was arrested after reportedly handing himself in to the Met Police Tuesday 7 November 2017 in London amid allegations of corruption, fraud. It is alleged that he has embezzled millions from his large retail company, leading it into a massive bankruptcy that is now an issue of national concern in Croatia and the countries around it. Todoric appeared in Westminster Magistrates’ Court and District Judge Richard Blake granted him freedom on 100,000 British pounds ($132,000) bail.

A European Arrest Warrant was issued after the firm collapsed, having amassed debts of over 5 billion euro. Criminal prosecutions have begun in Croatia against 14 senior figures at Agrokor, including Todoric, on suspicions of corruption and forgery. Todoric denies any wrongdoing, is accused of falsifying accounts to hide unsustainable debts estimated at £4.8bn (€5.4bn).

Asked by District Judge Richard Blake whether he consented or objected to the extradition request from Zagreb, Todoric said he would oppose being sent back to his home country, Reuters reports.

Prosecutor Benjamin Seifert, appearing on behalf of the Croatian authorities, told the court Todoric faced three charges back home — false accounting, fraud by false representation and abuse of position — amounting to a total alleged fraud worth about 110 million Euros.

The court heard that there was a worldwide freeze on Todoric’s assets.

“This is extremely serious offending,” Seifert said.

“The context in which I grant you bail is the knowledge that both within this country and throughout the world, your assets are frozen and your ability to obtain money is limited,” Judge Blake said from the bench. “The security is a very small sum in the context of what sums I have heard being spoken of.”

The judge also set conditions requiring that Todoric wear an electronic tag between midnight and 3 a.m., sign in at a London police station three times a week and give up his travel documents.

Agrokor, which began as a flower-growing operation in the former Yugoslavia in the 1970s, underwent a rapid expansion over the past decades that saw it run up debts of about 6 billion euros ($7 billion). The company employs about 60,000 people throughout the Croatia and neighbouring countries and is so large it now accounts for about 15 percent of Croatia’s gross domestic product. Its debt is too large for the government to rescue it without endangering the state’s financial stability including superannuation or pension funds that have invested in the company.

Although Todoric still formally owns 95 percent of Agrokor, the Croatian government, having rushed in a special law known as “Lex Agrokor” a few months ago has taken over management of the company. It is now trying to keep it alive through restructuring and negotiations with major creditors, which include Russia’s Sberbank and VTB bank, to which it owes 1.4 billion euros and who want their money back.

After he appeared on Europol’s fugitive arrest list, Todoric wrote on his blog that he was not hiding and that his conscience was clear.

“As a man whose human rights are deeply violated I have the right to oppose political persecution,” Todoric wrote. “Today, I too am fighting against a corrupt system in Croatia,” he wrote on 6 November 2017, the day before he handed himself in to London Met Police.

Todoric has always claimed that the government illegally took over his company and indicated that he will fight his extradition on the grounds that he is the victim of political pursuit.

Political pursuit, Mr Todoric, has been there always, only before you used it to benefit yourself, to wrongfully create and amass wealth and now you use it to crucify those that helped you in that. Out with the lot of you and your communist heritage – in with lustration! Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Agrokor, Agrokor threatens to bankrupt Croatia, communist heritage, corruption, corruption in Croatia, Croatia, Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, Ivica Todoric, Lex Agrokor, lustration, SDP, Social Democratic Party

The Cooking Of Agrokor’s Books

October 7, 2017 by inavukic 11 Comments

Agrokor Headquarters Zagreb Croatia

Croatia’s government claims that the results of the financial audit (first audit report released Thursday 5 October 2017) of key companies within Croatia’s ailing concern Agrokor justify the adoption of special law on extraordinary administration, which saw the state take control of the privately-held concern in April. My blogpost at that time emphasised an analysis that “when the government of a former communist country (Croatia) brings about and takes over with forced administration a calamitously failed private company (it subsidised and helped along the way as did the communist Yugoslavia regime via nationalisation of private assets and borrowed money injections) the gut tells you, regardless of the threat of thousands of job losses if that company sinks, you’re more than likely dealing with attempts of cover-ups of major incompetence, possible embezzlement come thefts and politically driven paths to sell and hand over the company or notable parts of it to a new entity.”

The extraordinary law rushed through the parliament then, commonly known as Lex Agrokor, has preserved jobs and contained the spread of systemic risk across the economy, the government said in a statement late on Thursday 5 October, after the Agrokor receiver unveiled the results of the audit conducted by PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP. The government had said and still maintains that Agrokor is a company of systemic importance for Croatia and its collapse could have a catastrophic impact on the economy.

The audit revealed enormous discrepancies between 2015 financial results of nine key companies within Agrokor reported earlier and the audited figures. Inflated value of assets, understated claims towards group members, over-estimated inventory and undocumented costs were some of the markers for the discrepancies.

UK based branch of PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP was named as auditor of the concern’s financial statements after preliminary probes revealed possible or likely accounting errors.

The revised financial report for the troubled Croatian retail, food and agriculture giant Agrokor, issued on Thursday, showed that the former management, led by company’s owner and founder Ivica Todoric, did not show the company’s full losses in its financial accounts. State extraordinary manager for Agrokor affairs Ante Ramljak presented the revised financial report for 2015 and 2016 which had been put together by the PriceWaterhouseCoopers audit agency.

Thursday’s report only included Agrokor’s major subsidiaries in the retail, wholesale, agriculture and food industries – Konzum, Tisak, Belje, PiK Vinkovci, Vupik, Ledo, Jamnica, Zvijezda and PiK Vrbovec.

The full consolidated report, including mother company Agrokor d.d., will be unveiled on Monday 9 October 2017 and then the government is expected to comment in detail

The revised report for the subsidiaries in 2015 showed 250 million euros more losses than Todoric’s management showed in its financial records. The state management’s figures showed that the subsidiary companies finished 2016 with 442 million euros in losses. The former management also inflated the capital worth of the subsidiary companies in 2015 by some 1.2 billion euros.

According to Thursday’s report, the subsidiary companies are worth 1.8 billion euros less than they were before 2015.

“I will not say that any [legal] irregularities [in the previous management’s financial records] occurred. I won’t speak about this until we have the figures for Agrokor [d.d.]. Accounting irregularities occurred,” Ramljak answered when asked if there was criminal wrongdoing involved.

“DORH [Croatian state attorney office] investigators are familiar with all these numbers,” he added.

Chief state attorney Dinko Cvitan had said in the past week that the full report will be important for DORH’s work.

The company’s role in the economy of Croatia is massive, with revenues of 6.5 billion euros in 2015 – almost 16 per cent of Croatia’s total GDP – and around 40,000 employees.

Agrokor employs another 20,000 people in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, while it is believed that suppliers and companies for the Slovenian retailer Mercator – which Agrokor bought in 2014 – employ around 70,000 people in Slovenia as well.

Croatian news agency HINA reported on Friday 6 October that Maxim Poletaev, deputy chairman of the management board of Russia’s Sberbank – a major creditor of Agrokor, has suggested that Croatia should service the debt of the food-to-retail concern. Poletaev has told Russian news agency Interfax that the debt of Agrokor to the Russian bank is now debt of the Croatian government, which it should pay. Poletaev also said that Croatia should use government bonds to pay back Sberbank, according to HINA. Agrokor owes Sberbank some 1.1 billion euro ($1.3 billion). In August, the bank filed a complaint against Agrokor owner, Ivica Todoric, and, according to media reports, it now plans to sue the auditor which had previously verified Agrokor’s financial statements.

Charging Croatia’s government – that is, Croatian taxpayers and people in general, as debtor for corruption that went on in Agrokor and its subsidiary companies would add to the already calamitous plummeting of Croatia’s economy and living standards.

The web upon which depends a final outlook and solution regarding Agrokor and its possible crushing and devastating effect upon Croatia’s economy that could create a new army of poor, unemployed and devastation is currently in the finishing “touches” stages and nervousness and jitters are felt all the way to the parliament. Whether this nervousness hides attempts to cover up the identification of individuals in past echelons in power who have amassed wealth through theft is yet to be revealed. However, that matters have reached a sticky and nasty point is perhaps clear from Friday’s events in the parliament that saw the parliament’s meeting come to a stop due to inability to reach the needed quorum for the voting on appointment of three constitutional judges. Friday’s sitting of the parliament was geared for voting on appointment of three constitutional judges and on the establishment of a parliamentary inquiry commission for Agrokor. The needed quorum to vote for constitutional judges is two thirds of parliament members while the one needed to vote in the inquiry commission is the normal majority of half plus one. The Social Democratic Party/SDP refused to enter the parliamentary chamber and thus no voting was held on either of the two matters with the announcement by the ruling Croatian Democratic Union/HDZ that they hoped an agreement can be reached with SDP by Wednesday 11 October when it hopes to return the voting to agenda. The agreement relates to SDP’s insistence that former ministers can be appointed into the inquiry commission for Agrokor while HDZ disagrees on grounds of conflict of interest in the event that members of such commission could be called upon as witnesses in the unraveling of Agrokor dealings that has brought the country to its knees.

HDZ and SDP being at loggerheads is of course nothing new, but on this issue of investigating Agrokor’s dealings, obvious corruption, theft that appear to have been going on for decades while enjoying government support and significant financial subsidies and injections, the engaging at loggerheads becomes a marker of attempts to cover up serious past criminal dealings among powerful individuals. There are indications also that in order to achieve an agreement that would bring SDP back sides on parliamentary seats, so that the voting in of constitutional judges can go ahead, HDZ may compromise and permit that certain category of former ministers may be appointed onto the inquiry commission for Agrokor! This, of course, would spell a disaster for independence of the commission’s dealings and deliverance – after all, all government ministers, regardless of their portfolio, are and always have been members of a tight club in which one covers for the other. 11^th October 2017 is set to be a yet another stormy day in Croatia’s parliament on the matter of the establishment of the inquiry commission for Agrokor and its member composition. Monday 9^th October when full audit report is expected for the whole Agrokor concern may indeed see the rats running in and out of parliamentary chamber, stalling the establishment of its inquiry commission for Agrokor. Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Agrokor, Ante Ramljak, corruption, Croatia, Dinko Cvitan, Ivica Todoric, Lex Agrokor

Croatian Economy: Rogues, Thieves And Other Vermin

April 12, 2017 by inavukic 15 Comments

Croatia’s Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic (L)
Extraordinary Commissioner for Agrokor Ante Ramljak (R)
Photo: Dragan Matic/HANZA MEDIA

When the government of a former communist country (Croatia) brings about and takes over with forced administration a calamitously failed private company (it subsidised and helped along the way as did the communist Yugoslavia regime via nationalisation of private assets and borrowed money injections) the gut tells you, regardless of the threat of thousands of job losses if that company sinks, you’re more than likely dealing with attempts of cover-ups of major incompetence, possible embezzlement come thefts and politically driven paths to sell and hand over the company or notable parts of it to a new entity. The private company in question is Agrokor (that employs some 60,000 people – dubbed the largest employer in the Balkans) and while the Croatian government is gung ho on bringing in domestic and foreign professionals to save the company from bankruptcy the fact remains that the government will be the one to choose those professionals and some members of the government may well have in their past dealings contributed to the downfall of Agrokor – professionally and/or politically.

Croatia’s Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic is adamant his government is taking the right steps in its chosen path to save Agrokor but that view is certainly not shared by many, including Moody’s Investor Services who have April 11 downgraded Agrokor’s credit rating because of the new moves to restructure Agrokor and its family companies under the new special law passed in Croatian parliament as legislative foundation for the government to take over the administration of the company. Moody’s project that, with the new law (Extraordinary Management Proceedings in Companies of Systemic Significance) default is highly likely for Agrokor, especially due to emerging uncertainties in the restructuring process for the company.

Ringing in my head: when did Croatia’s Prime Minister and his government become expert in strategic corporate management? So far, for the last twenty odd years, including this one, all Croatia’s governments have been “famous” for is their mismanagement of the economy and privatisation, and yet this current government continues to demonstrate its certainty that they always know best, even if the country is in free-fall economically due to government mismanagement, or rather, due to business knowhow incompetency inherited from the communist era.

So, Croatia is struggling to contain the economic fallout from problems at heavily indebted food group Agrokor, the restructuring expert appointed by the government to lead the process Ante Ramljak, now the (extraordinary) Commissioner for Agrokor, has commenced his work a couple of days ago and vows to do his best to save the company from bankruptcy. On the other hand Moody’s would suggest we buckle-up and wait for the inevitable bankruptcy of the company. According to the data from last September, Agrokor’s debts totaled around 45 billion kuna (US$6.42 billion), or six times its equity

On Friday 7th April, Agrokor’s CEO and majority owner, Ivica Todoric, handed over control of the indebted company to the Croatian government. Mr. Todoric activated a process of ‘extraordinary management’ following the passing of the abovesaid special law that was voted through by Croatia’s parliament that same day.

The special law, nicknamed “Lex Agrokor”, applies to companies of systemic importance to Croatia. The company must employ more than 5,000 workers and report revenue of at least HRK7.5 bn (€1bn). The law was formed to avoid the impact of Agrokor’s bankruptcy on the Croatian economy. Agrokor’s revenue stream of €6.5 bn in 2015 made up 15% of Croatia’s nominal GDP, and has 60,000 employees in Croatia and in other Balkan markets.

‘Lex Agrokor’ empowers Croatia’s judiciary to name Agrokor’s overseer and to placed it under the control of the Ministry of Finance. The judiciary’s appointed ‘extraordinary commissioner’ – Ante Ramljak – will oversee the restructure of Agrokor and its debt repayment as well as ensure payments to suppliers and maintain the flow in supply chain in the retail and food and agriculture business segments. The law stipulates that if within 15 months, following the activation of this law, a settlement is not reached between the debtor and lender then bankruptcy proceedings can begin.

From the Croatian government’s website we learn that “the coordinating committee of Agrokor’s financial creditors comprises Erste Bank, Privredna Banka Zagreb, Raiffeisenbank Austria, Sberbank, VTB Bank (Austria) AG and Zagrebacka Banka. The representatives of the banks support the legislative and institutional framework and also offer support to Ante Ramljak, who has been appointed receiver to Agrokor, Plenkovic said after the talks. The banks are ready to give a new loan, that is fresh liquidity to Agrokor, so as to enable this ailing retail and food concern to pay its workers and suppliers and help the group to function.”

The biggest Russian bank Sberbank is doing everything it can to support the Croatian Agrokor concern, to which it is the biggest creditor, stated recently the CEO of that Russian bank Herman Gref, adding that Sberbank does not want to manage retail in Eastern Europe. “We’re in close contact with the owners and management of Agrokor and we continue to support them. We will do everything so that the company remains standing and solves its temporary problems. There is a plan to get out of this situation which has been agreed with us,” Gref said in Moscow, without giving details.

The possibility exists that Russia’s companies could buy significant units in Agrokor – what a way to get Russia’s paws into the Croatian economy! Oh, how the former and current and redesigned communists network! Sadly, no easy sleeps seem possible for many of Croatia’s people in the foreseeable future.

Croatian government’s move to extraordinary and emergency control of Agrokor is nowhere near the concept and practicality of government bailouts we’ve grown to know in Western democracies since the 2007-2008 GFC. What’s happening with Agrokor is a takeover reminiscent of dictatorial entrenchments that do not equally and with same intensity open up to creating new avenues for job creation in case Agrokor does go into bankruptcy at the end of the day. All eggs in one basket so to speak. Not a good way to go. Ina Vukic