After we revealed the exclusive news on our web portal that the director of the Slovenian Press Agency, Bojan Veselinovič, intends to leave the Agency after the end of his second term on the 31st of December this year and then continue his career as a director or super-editor of the centralised editorial office in Vevče, owned by the media tycoon Martin Odlazek, even more details are now coming to light, suggesting that Odlazek’s empire is becoming the main operational media tool of the transitional left.
Martin Odlazek’s network has been thoroughly preparing for the launch of a media empire for a long time now, with which it intends to help the left get back to power in the upcoming parliamentary elections, thereby buying immunity from persecution and also ensuring further state funding for its media outlets. Namely, in February of this year, Odlazek’s subsidiaries took out a loan in the amount of five million euros for the Vevče project, where the premises for a radio and television station are being regulated and built. A business tower will be located there, in which the entire media production of Odlazek’s network will be centralised. As we have already revealed, each of Odlazek’s media outlets will supposedly only have one or two individual local journalists left, while everything else will be centralised in Vevče.
According to the source, the key capital for the survival of the empire came from the Dolenjska armourer Ivan Kralj, who sold a company and invested the money in Odlazek’s empire. According to the latter, Kralj does not have any specific “political demands” but rather only asks for financial returns. However, the same cannot be said for Darij Južna. Južna also invested his capital, but unlike Kralj, he is mainly looking for a political return, as we found out.
Odlazek is supposedly betting on the SD party
According to reliable information, the party that Odlazek is supposedly betting on is the SD party, whose president is the Member of the European Parliament, Tanja Fajon. According to our source, this can be deduced from the fact that the adviser to the president of the SD party has become none other than Leo Oblak. As we also learned, Oblak is making sure that all of his training and preparations are done in agreement with Odlazek. Such media building and coverage of certain political faces by the rich networks is once again revealing the weakness of Slovenian democracy, and a more concrete term for the aforementioned abuse of media power could be media democracy. Namely, with the power of the media, the politicians are being chosen by those who do not run in the elections but make sure to then take credit in the form of business and other financial privileges.
The coalition party NSi already had problems with Oblak in the past, namely with the unsuccessful attempts of severing ties between the party and Leo Oblak – Igor Oman. According to our information, they both have access to key people in the party (Jernej Vrtovec, Robert Ilc, and Valentin Hajdinjak), and at the same time, there is also the suspicion that information about the party is being leaked through them. Attacks on the NSi party are then being carried out through the Necenzurirano web portal (Uncensored), which is owned by Odlazek and, consequently, also includes Oblak.
But apparently, this is also not possible without the input of the former State Secretary for National Security in the government cabinet of Marijan Šarec, Damir Črnčec, who is currently working as an expert in the LMŠ parliamentary group. He is also associated with Odlazek as a “liaison officer.” It is known that Črnčes is one of the main sources of information for the journalists of Odlazek’s weekly – Reporter. This once right-wing media outlet is nowadays nothing more than a pale shadow of a once quality magazine, as after Odlazek’s purchase, it was quickly passed into the hands of the networks of the transitional left, part of which is also the former “right-wing extremist” Črnčec.
Odlazek is also getting richer by monopolising printing
As is also known, the Ljubljana part of the newspaper Večer has now also been moved to Vevče, and printing has also been moved from the building of the Delo newspaper to Odlazek. We probably do not have to specifically emphasise that the mentioned change represents a significant blow for Delo, and on the other hand, quite a good deal for Odlazek. The company Infonet, which is also co-owned by Kralj and whose director is Oblak, bought a printing machine worth 2 million euros last spring, which will print the daily newspapers. This machine has now been transferred to Vevče. The plan was for all daily newspapers except Delo to be printed exclusively at Odlazek’s building.
The mentioned information, which was revealed to us by our source, shows that Odlazek’s empire is becoming the main operational media tool of the left, which is hungry for power. If anyone has wondered in the past how it is possible for most Slovenian media to keep on telling us the same things, it is now clear as day what the real reason is for this. There is a strong lust for money and power present, so it should not surprise us if, in the light of the upcoming elections, different affairs and scandals may arise, all in favour of the left, of course.
Sara Kovač
