Turin Calling!

While DOS (the Democratic Opposition of Serbia) leaders are filling government and ambassador seats, and while the two ministers of justice are coping with Hague Tribunal and other war crime indictments, while Serbian prosecutors are getting bored waiting for some signals from 'above', while Belgrade parliaments are taking slow steps in establishing special commissions and boards for fighting corruption, while the telecommunication ministers are re-reading some old contracts on privatisation of the post office system (PTT), the workers are on strike for not receiving appropriate salaries and, led by melancholic President Kostunica, elaborate on the issues of strategic development of electronic communications by ' relying on their own capacities' - the Roman daily 'Repubblica' published a series of articles on regarding the sale of a half of the Serbian Telecom to the Italian STET and the Greek OTE, back in 1997. A Turin prosecutor, Antonio di Pietro, launched an investigation, which is about to determine whether the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lamberto Dini - in cooperation with the former FRY President, Slobodan Milosevic - 'smuggled' a certain sales commission of 32 million German marks from that business. Was it Hague Tribunal Chief Prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, who instigated that accusation (an idea for professional patriots)?

The story is quite appealing - since, about 32 million DM is allegedly lacking - since the famous gigantic transaction worth officially some 1.568 billion DM, which helped Milosevic to politically survive the crisis after the well-known 'citizens' walks' in Belgrade, to win the subsequent elections and, by all accounts, prepare the Kosovo offensive. Roman 'Repubblica', namely, claims that, on the occasion of the sale of the Serbian Telecom, a similar amount of money was deposited in some bank accounts of 'some secret firms' in London. This time, the prompt Belgrade daily 'Politika' also determined a difference between the published price of 49% of ownership of the Serbian Telecom - the mentioned 1.568 Billion DM - and the official 'revenue' to the Fund for the Development of Serbia, which amounted to 1.536 billion DM. That difference almost perfectly equals the aforementioned sum of 32 billion DM. I can also notice that a difference between 1.568 and 1.6 billion DM also makes 32 billion DM, and it makes me wonder whether the two important negotiators, as Milosevic and Dini are, really went into detailing over this contract, or just agreed over a 'round' sum (though such a theory is easily undermined by the fact that 1.6 billion DM does not appear as a round sum in the precise Italian accounting report. Hence, the sales commission should be sought for in a 'separate article', which is not unusual in modern trade economies).

Lawyer Milenko Radic also got himself involved in this story by way of Belgrade daily 'Glas'. He observes that the mentioned STET's contract was not even drawn by the Italian company, but by its 'facade' company situated in Holland - STET International Nederland (SIN) - and that the consultant fee, intended to be paid to the renowned Natwest Markets, was not paid directly, but via Frankfurt to its independent branch of Natwest Securities Ltd. (16 plus 12.45 million DM), and that the lawyers' office of Weil, Gotshal & Manges gained a good profit from all that.

When I was younger, I also took part in this journalist race - to have the public informed not via Serbian Government, but via local and foreign press - to uncover all those deals concerning the post office company and to expose all those who gained any profit from it. Thus, I was first in the Yugoslav press to publish a text entitled 'Mobile Milosevic', in the daily 'Nasa Borba', at the beginning of February 1997, in which I managed to reveal, some five months before the Serbian Telecom was actually sold, that after the visit of Italian telephone company bosses (STET SpA and Telecom Italia SpA were not integrated at the time) and a sudden Minister of Foreign Affairs offical, Piero Fassina's trip to Belgrade, Milosevic seemed to have realised that the 'Italian connection in the process of privatisation of the Telecom brings the utmost profit' (hence, due to 'the opposing opinion', he dismissed the then PTT director, Miodrag Jaksic).

Tanjug reports today that the main mediator between Mr. Fassina, Lamberto Dini and Slobodan Milosevic was a former British Minister of Foreign Affairs, Douglas Herd (close to the Natwest Markets). I have to add here another thing - having pointed to the actual price of the Serbian Telecom, in an interview for Radio Deutsche Welle, at the beginning of July 1997, I was practically the only 'opposition-based' reporter who claimed that Milosevic must have gained an excellent profit from that public bargain - and I was repeating that to the dismay of almost all Belgrade independent economists and oppositions activists. Now, Roman 'Repubblica' publishes the estimates of its secret STET informer, described as the Controller, that it was actually a 'gift to Milosevic', and that nobody from Eastern Europe has ever been given a chance to cut such a good deal. That meant that the Controller and I were of one mind (I can assure you that it is not the same person).

This entire intricate story about the sale of a half of the Serbian Telecom to STET and OTE, and a gift (?) - half of the first licence to the mobile telecom - the Karic Mobtel (it seems that no one has yet seen that contract, which Jaksic and Karic had signed in Cyprus in 1995) - makes this strike of PTT employees more dramatic. The bizarre circumstance is that the FRY President, Vojislav Kostunica received a delegation of the Serbian Telecom union, the one that organised the strike, and he allegedly endorsed their attitude, which is against Djindjic's efforts to procure the licence for the third mobile telecom in Serbia.

This news is hard to believe. Kostunica, who contrary to all DOS pre-election documents which he signed (let's use the same phraseology that Kostunica uses for Nenad Canak) - sends the message against privatisation and against the competition on the domestic market, against the inflow of foreign investments in the local infrastructure and so on. He appears to transform from a nationalist into a socialist. For some reason, the words of the old liberal from Vojvodina, Mihailo Polit-Desancic occur to me: 'Poor are the people with the proletariat in power!"