With the resignation of Interior Minister Tatjana Bobnar, the more left-wing media also noticed that the criminal investigators were looking into the privatisation of the Gen-I energy company and Robert Golob’s business operations in the Balkans. And they have been doing this for quite a long time. But now, thanks to the resignation of the Minister of the Interior, Tatjana Bobnar, and the resignation of Acting Director-General of the Police, Boštjan Lindav, they can no longer hide it. They both revealed that upon taking office, Prime Minister Golob demanded that they have to reinstate Darko Muženič, who was dismissed under the previous government, as the head of the National Bureau of Investigation, which is currently investigating Golob – even though Muženič was being investigated by the European prosecutors at the time. Golob also demanded that the head of the Police Directorate in Nova Gorica, Evgen Govekar, be replaced. Muženič was appointed to the top of the National Bureau of Investigation before the European Prosecutor’s Office dismissed the case against him, just because Golob demanded it. However, Govekar has not been removed yet. And since he had not completed the “depoliticisation” of the police, Golob refused to appoint Lindav as a full-time Director-General of the Police. He could only be an acting director, who could be let go at any time if he refused to obey.
And the most bizarre event in this whole thing is that, as the Prime Minister explained to the National Assembly, it is the investigative journalist Bojan Požar’s fault that the Prime Minister has set up a special unit in the government for his protection, as he no longer trusts the regular police. Well, the regular police are investigating him. Požar published a video of our Prime Minister with his child when he was on his first visit to Brussels.
But let’s make a comparison. Požar’s video was very innocent, compared to Dejan Karba’s investigations into the then-young children of former Prime Minister Janez Janša. Or compared to the stories published about Janša’s children by the media outlets that support Golob’s political pole. Today, Karba is a political employee in Golob’s government. Just like many other journalists who were big supporters of the so-called “Constitutional Arch Coalition” (the left-wing parties of the former government). Conversations about setting up a special unit for Golob’s protection began before Požar’s publication of the video in question. But Golob’s left-wing web portal “Necenzurirano” (Uncensored) would probably explain this by claiming that Golob foresaw what would happen. The great leader knows in advance what Požar and the other media that have not yet been “depoliticised” will publish. And he takes action.
The Prime Minister also told Members of Parliament how the creation of a special security service which is not subordinate to the police, just for him and his family, is completely unproblematic, adding that no one should be bothered by it. Between the lines, he also told them that no one should be interested in this, either. But why should it not interest us that the Prime Minister does not want to be protected by the police who are investigating him? And why should it not interest us that the Prime Minister sees state security as his private business, where he can do whatever he likes, and it is not even up for discussion?
Golob paid nothing, but Milović got 562,666 euros
The Prime Minister is only one of the highest representatives of the state, for whom it provides security. Formally speaking, he is not the most important. There are a few people that rank higher than him in terms of security. The police, which falls under the government’s jurisdiction – under Golob, provide protection for all of them. The same police officers also provide security for the chiefs of the other branches of government. The Prime Minister has now decided, only when it comes to himself, that these police officers are incompetent. And he has set up his own security, which is not subordinate to the police. Because police security is not good enough for him. A new service specifically for Golob and his family is operating within the General Secretariat of the Government. But he has taken some of the staff and money for it away from the regular police.
However, as Prime Minister, Golob continues to protect the heads of other branches of government with the police officers that are not good enough for him. Whom he does not trust. He left the inferior staff and technology there but took the money. The Prime Minister’s reasoning demeans the heads of all the other branches of government. What he has done is privatise the protection of the representatives of the authorities.
And just like what he did with the police, Golob had previously also reimagined the sale of the nuclear power plant as his own private business venture. He privatised the sale of electricity from the state-owned nuclear power plant because it enabled him and his colleagues to pay themselves divine bonuses, and it continues to enable him to conceal the real reason why he paid 103,000 euros to the company of the then-journalist and now-chief PR representative of his party, the Freedom Movement (Gibanje Svoboda), Vesna Vuković. He continues to conceal the reasons for these transfers, together with the state-owned energy company Gen-I, which, as a state-owned company, has received large state guarantees in the past. Vuković is also hiding the real reason for the money transfers. She even publicly announced in the past that she would explain what happened. But she never did.
The fact that police officers are usually incapable of providing security was confirmed by the current Defence Minister Marjan Šarec, who explained this by talking about his personal experience, saying that one of them did not know how to get him from the Ministry of Defence to the Government building. From here, it only takes one more step for Šarec to introduce special security for himself. For example, a military one. There are several reasons why Šarec is so servile to the head of the government. Even though he lost the elections, and his party did not even make it to the National Assembly, Golob made him a minister. But there is even more going on behind the scenes. Miloš Milović is from Šarec’s Kamnik. And Šarec paid him in the past and facilitated important deals for him. Well, not Šarec, personally. The municipality and later the government he led.
The Prime Minister revealed in parliament last week that he does not pay Miloš Milović for his help and added that Milović’s security advice to individual ministers, such as the Minister of Health, Danijel Bešič Loredan, who has 24-hour protection, has cost him nothing. Moreover, the Prime Minister also said that “Nobody is paying him for any favours from anywhere else.” However, Golob conveniently forgot to mention that Milović has been paid a lot so far. In the last ten years or so, his company has received half a million euros in public funds. During the governments of Miro Cerar and Marjan Šarec, more than 200,000 euros were paid to Milović’s company for the care and integration of migrants. The Ministry of the Interior paid the company an additional 70,000 euros, the public energy company Energetika Ljubljana paid him more than 50,000 euros for advice and the like, the municipal company Velenje paid him 52,000 euros, and even the Slovenian Power Plants Holding is on the list, with a wire transfer of 35,000 euros.
You can find out more about the payments from state-owned companies to Milović’s company VPS Svetovanje (VPS Consulting), which he owns with his wife, in the Erar application for the portrayal of public money use in the Republic of Slovenia – here.
State transfers to Milović’s company dropped dramatically in 2020, when Marjan Šarec (formerly of the List of Marjan Šarec, now a member of the Freedom Movement party) resigned and Janez Janša (Slovenian Democratic Party – Slovenska demokratska stranka, SDS) took over the government. At that time, the money transfers fell almost to zero. Why?
And Milović was not the only one who experienced this. As heard among the members of the former government of Miro Cerar: Milan Kučan and Stanislav Škrabec, who are behind Šarec and Milović, had lost power. And the cycling protests against the Janša government began. Which Kučan even personally attended.
Milović is well known to the police and politicians. And not only because of his problems with the judiciary, where the Supreme Court is still assessing his guilt for receiving 330,000 euros from the state-owned company Slovenian Railways for work that did not take place, which I already wrote about last week. Milović claims that he is the victim of a wrongful prosecution because the money was part of a fictitious deal for Aleksander Čeferin, who also supposedly took it. Milović was assisting Čeferin’s law firm at the time.
Guard, modelled after Šiško’s, at the expense of taxpayers
Let’s say it as it is: instead of the police, the task of Prime Minister Golob’s protection was taken over by a private guard set up by the Prime Minister. In the same way that the failed politician Andrej Šiško set up his own guard to defend people from migrants because he did not trust the police to protect the border. But we all have to pay for Golob’s guard. We did not have to pay for Šiško’s. Šiško was an amateur. And Golob set up his guard on the advice of Miloš Milović, who had in the past earned his money from dealing with migrants who had already crossed the border, paid for by centre-left governments. He is a professional. And in the case of Golob, there is also no real danger that he will end up in prison for setting up his own guard, where Šiško was sent by the judiciary, which was led by judge Branko Masleša in the criminal division. Šiško was accused of planning to carry out a coup d’état against then-Prime Minister Miro Cerar. Golob, however, is the head of government, and he is certainly not launching a coup against himself. And the criminal division of the Supreme Court is no longer headed by Masleša. He has retired and has been awarded the judiciary prize for his unfair trial of Janez Janša. And other judicial achievements.
There have been many other high-profile political events involving Milović, whom many politicians definitely know. In 2017, State Secretary Boštjan Šefic informed the now-deceased Mayor of Velenje, Bojan Kontič (Social Democrats party – SD), that the Ministry of the Interior had signed a contract with the owner of the so-called singles home, the company “VPS Svetovanje,” owned by the Milović couple, to rent part of the former Vegrad singles homes, which the company had bought a year earlier from the bankruptcy trustee of the company Vegrad. At the time, there was a revolt in the municipality against such a centre, and Kontič was also shocked by the haste. People even demanded a referendum. Milović, a former police officer who went on holiday at sea with the President of the Social Democrats party and current Minister of Foreign Affairs Tanja Fajon three years ago, got a lot of help from the government in his business ventures.
But the person who knows Milović even better is the current Minister of Defence and former Prime Minister Marjan Šarec. Because Šarec did not exercise his pre-emption right in his municipality of Kamnik, which he was the mayor of at the time, Milović’s company, “VPS Svetovanje,” bought the Katzenberg mansion and its land. This would have been difficult for Šarec to overlook. It would be like the mayor Zoran Janković in Ljubljana not knowing who had bought the Ljubljana castle for which the municipality had not exercised its pre-emption right. This would be even more bizarre than what Šarec accused the security guard who was driving him around of doing. Milović’s company bought the mansion and its land for 310,000 euros from the company “Iskra Mehanizmi” at an auction in May 2018. Milović said at the time that he bought the mansion as an “investment idea”.
One could say that good investments from the past allow Milović to advise Golob for free today on how to set up his own private guard, and a bunch of his ministers on how to protect themselves from a furious people. Health Minister Bešič Loredan needs such protection from doctors and patients 24 hours a day. As he himself said: he would not be willing to take up the post otherwise.
In the National Assembly, Golob spoke of following the example of Janez Drnovšek. This was refuted by the police. It would be much closer to the truth to say that Golob is following the example of Šiško. Except that Golob is a professional, and we are all paying for his guards. And we also pay Golob’s main man in the guard, Milović, well.
Peter Jančič, Spletni časopis
