In his recent divorce proceedings, Prime Minister Robert Golob became the owner of Star Solar, a company formerly owned by his ex-wife. The company mainly does business with state-owned companies. As a result, many in Slovenia have started to wonder about the obvious corruption risks. New details of the company’s business are now coming to light.
The disclosures add up to a story that proves once again how higher taxes do not increase the welfare of the population. They only increase the prosperity of the select few who benefit, transparently or not, at the expense of increased government spending.
The newspaper Finance’s financial investigation into the Prime Minister’s “solar” deals has discovered a number of dilemmas. The Prime Minister’s answers to these are perfunctory.
Until recently, the company Star Solar was owned by the Prime Minister’s ex-wife. The circumstances under which the company operated led to the public belief that Golob’s ex-wife was, in fact, only a straw owner of the company and that Golob himself was the real owner. The company is in the energy sector, an industry in which the Prime Minister has worked in senior positions throughout his career. The company’s current Director and representative is his daughter Luna. The change in the ownership structure took place on the 15th of November, 2022.
According to the newspaper Finance, Golob’s ex-wife, Jana Nemec Golob, became involved in the Prime Minister’s business in 2012, when the company SPV SIM1 was established. The sole shareholder was the company Simbia. At the end of November of the same year, the company Star Solar became the new owner of SPV. The company was founded with a minimum capital injection (7,500 euros), and Jana Nemec Golob was the sole shareholder and representative. The company Star Solar then lent 991,492.80 euros to Simbia at the end of July at an interest rate of 6 percent, the newspaper Finance reports. The paper trail of these dealings that could be found in the Agency of the Republic of Slovenia for Public Legal Records and Related Services (AJPES) stops there. At the end of December, SPV SIM1 then underwent a change of ownership. Star Solar was merged into the company, and SPV SIM1 continued its operations under the new name Star Solar. Jana Nemec Golob was again the sole representative and shareholder of the company.
The company Simbia is now bankrupt. According to Chinese interlocutors who spoke to the newspaper Finance, the company was buying solar panels at a time when they would not have been profitable in Slovenia. They received volume discounts on their purchases. Simbia’s creditors have not yet been paid, Finance reports.
The vast majority of revenues came from the state-owned company
Golob’s “solar” company generated 70 percent of its revenues last year from its business with the state-owned company Borzen. A year before that, almost all of the company’s revenues were generated by its business with the state-owned company. The income comes from a support scheme for electricity generated from renewable sources. The owner of a private power plant may or may not sell the electricity to the state-owned company.
Selling to a state-owned company is probably less complex than selling on the market. The power is bought on the stock exchange at prices that are agreed in advance. The state-owned company offered a purchase price that was four times the market price to all those who joined the scheme before the end of 2021. This was around 40 euros per megawatt hour. According to the newspaper Finance, the guaranteed price for a power plant such as Star Solar was between 171 euros per megawatt hour (for stand-alone buildings) and 180 euros (for power plants on existing buildings).
The guaranteed price was set for 15 years in advance, until 2027, a period equivalent to three-quarters of the expected lifetime of the solar panels.
How did the Golob ensure himself, as well as others, a piece of the pie?!
It is important to note here that the funds for buying electricity are set by the government. In September 2022, Robert Golob’s government set a new five-year scheme. The funds have been increased and now amount to 120 million euros per year until 2026.
The company Borzen has so far transferred 2,148,410.00 euros to Star Solar’s account, according to data available in the Erar application for the portrayal of public money use in the Republic of Slovenia.
The newspaper Finance further notes that in some years, Erar shows that Borzen has transferred more money to Star Solar than the Star Solar’s total turnover.
Star Solar also shows financial debt in all of its years of operating. First to its founder, then apparently to a natural person. The loan is not a bank loan, the media notes. The company paid interest until 2022 – the year Golob became Prime Minister. In any case, the original stake was repaid to the creditor six years later, and by 2019, the company had more money in its account than it owed. At the end of 2022, Star Solar had 1.1 million euros in its accounts.
You don’t have to pay high taxes if you manage to avoid them
The Prime Minister has been pushing for tax increases from the start of his term. He has definitely delivered on his pre-election promise to raise taxes. It is one of the few promises that has ever been fulfilled. In this context, it is important to note that the above-mentioned company paid tax for the first time in 2019. In the first seven years, no tax was paid, even though a profit of 394 euros was made by 2018. Between 2019 and 2022, the total tax paid was just over 64 thousand euros. This amounts to 2.6 percent of the total revenue generated since 2012 and 6.6 percent between 2019 and 2022, the newspaper Finance reports, concluding that the company claimed a tax deduction in the first years. And thus, the money accumulated in the company’s account during this time. Finally, the same newspaper noted that Jana Nemec Golob was paid minimum labour costs and much higher service costs by the company. In 2020, for example, service costs accounted for 56 percent of total operating expenditure, at just over 104,000 euros.
Numerous media enquiries, such as the amount of electricity generated by the company over the last five years, who were all the buyers of the generated electricity (perhaps the Gen-I energy company, which Golob used to head, was one of them?) and its price, remain a mystery. Also unanswered are questions about who Star Solar’s lender is, why the company is hoarding money instead of investing in new production capacity, and how come the company did not pay tax for the first few years.
The Prime Minister’s Office gave a perfunctory reply stating that the Prime Minister had reported a change in his assets to the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption (KPK). The change occurred both in the ownership of real estate and in the ownership of a company. It also states that the Integrity and Prevention of Corruption Act does not prevent ownership of companies.
Ž. K.
