We are revealing the newest affair of the SD MP Gregor Židan. Through the Olimpija Football Club, he arranged for his acquaintance, a convicted fraudster Zoran Glišić, to serve his sentence as a coach’s assistant of the junior teams led by Židan, instead of serving time in prison. Glišić avoided prison with 1,080 hours of community service.
The Social Democrats party (SD) MP Gregor Židan has already been involved in several scandals during his term. The last time he upset the Slovenian public was when he assumed the role of the head coach’s assistant to the U-21 national football team’s coach, Mile Ačomović, during the European Under-21 Football Championship. Member of Parliament Gregor Židan requested permission to carry out additional activities from the National Assembly, but his request was rejected. However, it seems that Židan still decided to make some additional earnings, as he took on the role of coach of the youth national team at the Slovenian Football Association (Nogometna Zveza Slovenije – hereinafter referred to as the NZS). And while Židan and the NZS do not find the reimbursements of costs related to voluntary work, based on an oral agreement, controversial, the tax experts say otherwise. “Given that he is not employed there, he cannot have his subsistence costs settled. These are offered as a meal reimbursement if the employer sends an employee on a business trip. And the amount of the daily allowance depends on the duration of the business trip,” explained tax consultant Ivan Simič, adding that from a tax point of view, this is a business contract.
The Commission for Public Office and Elections of the National Assembly agreed with Simič’s opinion. In a statement for POP TV made some time ago, the president of the Commission for Public Office and Elections, Ivan Hršak, announced the findings of the commission, which found that Židan had violated the Deputies Act, as he did not have the permission of his employer, that is, the National Assembly, to perform additional services. “Us MPs should be an example to other citizens, and we should abide by the laws that we ourselves also adopt. In this case, what Gregor Židan did is completely wrong,” Hršak said.
Gregor Židan helped his acquaintance, a convicted fraudster Zoran Glišić, avoid jail time – instead, he performed 1,080 hours of community service as the coach’s assistant in the junior teams in Olimpija
For quite a while, Gregor Židan also worked as the coach of the junior teams at the Football Club Olimpija’s Football School. In 2014, he also became the director of the youth directive. And it seems that as a coach at Olimpija, he also helped his acquaintance Zoran Glišić. Namely, Glišić found himself in court years ago, when he was part of a larger criminal group. According to the Delo newspaper, Glišić was part of a larger group, which also included Miha Michael, Darko Henigman, Adnan Zukanović, Edhem Tukić, Tadej Škrinjar, Saša Dujmović, Zoran Musić, Damijan Nežmah, Avni Ademi, Admir Džombić, Jasmin Rastoder, Gašper Cajner and Hasan Smaljović. All of these men, with the exception of Cajner (who got six months of probation), were sentenced to prison. Glišić was the only one who took advantage of his acquaintance, and instead of going to prison for a year, he performed community service at Olimpija. He did this as the coach’s assistant to the junior teams at the Football Club Olimpija. Sources also add that he performed the community service in groups that were supervised by Židan. Glišić was convicted on the 10th of July 2016. If he actually performed community service at Olimpija for at least eight hours a day, Glišić served his sentence in just 135 days.
Glišić was part of a criminal society that gave out fake loans. Michael, Henigman, Škrinjar and Kaič were also part of this group. According to Delo, they promised Andreja V. a favourable 1.2-million-euro loan through the non-existing Austrian banker Mathias. However, they tricked their victim and told her that she had to pay a loan deposit first, in addition to two more deposits beforehand, and swindled her out of 124 thousand euros. According to our sources, this is just one of the many frauds that Glišić has committed so far.
It seems that it was, indeed, Židan who saved Glišić from having to serve time in prison, as he was among the leading representatives of the football school at Olimpija. The two supposedly know each other from when they were younger, as they lived close to each other in Štepanjsko naselje in Ljubljana. Sources also told us that their friendship also continued later, in adulthood. We sent a few journalistic questions to both MP Židan, as well as the Olimpija Football Club, but so far, neither have responded to our questions.
Luka Perš
