Nineteen years after the event, the first hearing in the Trenta case, which opposition leader Janez Janša refers to as the Patria 2 trial because it is a similarly absurd indictment, started this week. The prosecution is accusing Janša of selling a property in Trenta for too high a price, even though it was sold at a normal price for real estate in the area at the time. At the same time, no one is prosecuting those who bought property in Murgle at a lower price at the time, and some of whom sold it for a much higher amount, which is what Janša is being accused of.
“At the same time, when I bought this property in 1992 for 45 thousand marks, Janez Drnovšek, Milan Kučan, Janez Zemljarič, Janez Stanovnik and Franc Šetinc all bought houses in Murgle for an even lower price, I don’t know… 30 thousand marks, and some of them sold these houses 10-15 years later for 500, 600 thousand euros, and nobody is prosecuting them. So, I admit guilt. I did just that,” Janez Janša said in a press statement, explaining that he himself bought the property for 45 thousand marks in 1992 and sold it in 2005 to a private person for around 120 thousand euros. “Now, if I am punished for this, some 200 thousand other Slovenians will have to be punished, who bought some real estate at a lower price than the price they chose when they sold it,” he stressed.
Drnovšek bought a house in Murgle for 37 thousand marks – and sold it for around half a million euros
The late Janez Drnovšek lived in Murgle, specifically in a house with 225 square metres of floor space, where one of Josip Broz – Tito‘s closest associates, Stane Dolanc, lived before him, reports the media outlet Svet 24. As the magazine Demokracija reported a few years ago, Drnovšek paid 37 thousand marks for the house, but according to later accounts, he sold it for more than 500 thousand euros and bought a house in Zaplana with the money he got from the sale.
Janez Stanovnik also sold a house he bought cheaply for half a million euros
The former President of the Associations of the National Liberation Movement of Slovenia, Janez Stanovnik, who is now deceased, also found his home in Murgle, more specifically in a 128-square-metre house close to Kučan’s. Although it is not known exactly how much Stanovnik bought the house for, the media outlet Slovenske novice reported in 2012 that he put it up for sale for around half a million euros because he decided to spend his old age at the Trnovo Senior Citizens’ Centre. As the magazine Finance reported at the time, Stanovnik, as a deserving Ljubljana resident, was granted an assisted living apartment there. “He pays a profit rent for his assisted living apartment, or the difference between profit and non-profit rent. This amounts to 27 euros a month, which he transfers to one of the humanitarian organisations,” they said.
Why were there no proceedings against Kučan, who got the house in a proven corrupt way?
Like Drnovšek, Zemljarič and Stanovnik, former President of the Republic and last President of the Communist Party of Slovenia, Milan Kučan, got some real estate in Murgle for a ridiculously low price in the early 1990s. In his case, it was a house in Murgle, which he moved into in 1989, at a time when he was the President of the Central Committee of the Union of Communists of Yugoslavia and a delegate to the Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia.
Kučan bought the house in Murgle on the basis of the 1991 Jazbinšek Law, which was passed for the holders of the housing rights of the social housing of that time, and the prices were up to 10 times lower than the real prices of the real estate in question. According to the magazine Demokracija, the house where the Kučan family lived was valued at more than 3 million Slovenian tolars, or almost 95,000 German marks. However, Kučan paid only 41 thousand marks for the house. For a symbolic sum of money, he also decided to buy a plot of land around the house, where another house could have been built.
Despite the bargain price, Kučan asked for a refund of the money invested in the Murgle house. In his request to be recognised for the funds invested in accordance with the provisions of Article 62 of the Law on Housing and to be reimbursed in accordance with point 1 of the commentary to Article 62, he pointed out that he had made some improvements to the premises and had invested his own funds of 964,000 dinars in carrying out the works.
Six years ago, Svet24 reported that the Surveying and Mapping Authority of the Republic of Slovenia (GURS) valued the 145-square-metre property, which was built in 1980, at 335 thousand euros. Since property prices on the market have gone up, it makes sense to look at how much similarly sized houses in Murgle are selling for on the market today as a rough comparison.
For example, on the real estate selling website nepremičnine.net, we can see that a house in Murgle built in 1969, adapted in 1999, measuring 83.4 square metres with an attached plot of 831 square metres is being sold at a reduced price of 619,000 euros. A semi-detached house of 83 square metres, built in 1982, with an atrium and an adjoining plot of land, is being sold for 560 thousand euros. A slightly larger atrium house in Murgle of 101 square metres, built in 1974, is being sold for 800 thousand euros.
If the Kučan family decides to sell the house, they would undoubtedly get much more for it than what they paid for it. Kučan could therefore sell his house for 20 times the purchase price.
It is really difficult to understand why the sale of the Trenta property, which was bought for 45.000 Deutschmarks at the time and then sold 13 years later for a regular price of real estate in the area at the time, is now being questioned at all. “The State Fund, for example, sold an inferior property in the Triglav National Park at the same time at an even significantly higher price,” Janša explained.
Janša calls the Trenta case Patria 2, because it is a similarly absurd indictment. In the case of Patria, they were talking about an unknown date, an unknown amount, an unknown bribe, an unknown person, an unknown place and time. “Now, it is the same absurd charge of aiding and abetting the abuse of office. There was no abuse of office. I bought the property from a private person, I paid a fair price for it, I sold it at the price that was on the market at the time, and that can be proven. There is no crime here,” says Janša, who stressed that the case is merely a political process that has been dragging on for 19 years. Given that the first hearing has only just taken place, he says, it is clear that early elections are imminent. Meanwhile, the dominant left-leaning media are making sure that the public is increasingly referring to an affair that is not even an actual affair.
A. H.
