Migrations In Autumn

Quite a few ranking Serbian officials have moved into new, more spacious residences in the past few days, and some are preparing to do so in the nearest future. Most of them have migrated in the direction of Dedinje, Belgrade's most prestigious residential area.

It only fits that the issue was put in motion at the very top: federal president Zoran Lilic's cabinet announced that the president was about to move into the villa in Uzicka 15 which belonged to the late post-war Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito.The villa includes a massive oval section built shortly before Tito's death and has remained empty ever since.

Naturally, if the opposition coalition "Zajedno" should somehow clinch victory in the upcoming elections, former governor of the National Bank of Yugoslavia Dragoslav Avramovic will be the villa's new tennant.

It would be fair to say that occupying the presidential residence is a fairly straight forward matter, unlike cases regarding some other officials who have managed to transform state-owned property into their own in quite peculiar fashion. During the trial of DS leader Zoran Djindjic, accused of slander in what is known as the "wheat affair", the defence came up with evidence that the republican prime minister and managing director of the Progres enterprise, Mirko Marjanovic, bought a spacious flat of 155 square metres for his daughter, Olivera, for 350,000 DEM only. The flat formerly belonged to the federal government. "Get the hell out of here" was Marjanovic's reply to reporters of the Belgrade daily Blic when they rang his doorbell in an attempt to get a statement, but they did find out from his neighbours that not only his daughter, but the prime minister himself and the rest of the family were living in the flat too.

Like his republican counterpart, federal premier Radoje Kontic opted to register his new apartment on a relative's name rather than his own. Kontic's wife made a deal of a lifetime last December when she swapped a downtown condo for a Dedinje villa whose total area is 350 square metres. The contract, signed by the minister of finance in the Kontic government, Tomica Raicevic, states that the prime minister's family added 138,804 dinars to complete the deal, which was equivalent to 42,000 DEM a week after the deal was signed, following a 330 percent devaluation of the local currency.

The Foundation for democracy sent a letter to the federal public prosecutor soon afterwards demanding an investigation and charges against Kontic for abuse of power. However, even if the impossible happens and Kontic somehow gets evicted from his new home, he has little to worry about; the new tennant of his former downtown condo is - believe it or not - his son Predrag, while the disputed villa has become the official prime minister's residence - the courtesy of a decree adopted by the Kontic government on August 8.

The former industry minister and the current managing director of the Smederevo steel complex Sartid 1913, Dusan Matkovic, who became famous on March 9, 1991 when he called on all pensioners to declare war on the champions of "mayhem and madness", recently gave up his apartment of 90 square metres for a bigger one in Belgrade's other elite residential area, Senjak. Although his employees declined to say how bigger and how much he paid for it, rumour has it that the size of his new flat worth half a million marks is 220 square metres. The workers in Matkovic's former firm, one of Yugoslavia's leading footwear producers which gave him the fully furnished flat six years ago, remember him as the man responsible for its decline and near demise.

"He came in a Polish version of fiat 126 which was falling apart and left in a brand new Volkswagen Golf. He sold a fur-processing plant which was part of the footwear complex while he was the manager, and the whereabouts of the money is still a complete mystery", employees of the Belgrade footwear

industry said.

More migrations will certainly follow, for there is no doubt that the two premiers have set an example to other ministers how to solve their housing problems. The trouble is that facts and figures concerning such transactions are kept well away from the public as "matters of national security". Optimists believe that the sudden rush for bigger flats is a result of panic among government structures that they could lose the forthcoming elections, and their natural desire to secure their financial position before the disaster strikes. Those less inclined to believe in such an outcome warn that unhindered greed and top-level corruption have been the pillars of Milosevic's regime ever since he came to power, and that his breed of ministers and managers will continue to accumulate wealth in such fashion for as long as the magic wand keeps transforming state-owned property into their own. To be registered as the property of the next of kin, of course.