The safest way for all adult citizens to check whether they own free shares and whether they are registered in Shareholder fund is to personally go to the nearest post office or Poštanska štedionica branch with a valid ID card.
Records are the first and basic condition for receiving 6.000 dinars from the state from September 22 to 25. which Aleksandar Vučićn and Siniša Mali have been bragging about for days. Those who are not registered can do so from September 7 through the website of the Treasury Board.
They tried to "sell" this "gifting" to the people as a one-time aid to all citizens of the country that will not come from the budget. It turned out that Vučić's money is something that all residents already own as a product of long-term privatizations because they all had shares in the largest state enterprises, such as NIS, which is a process that Vučić "spit" en masse until he came to power.
It is very interesting that among the 24 disputed privatizations, the name of Siniša Malog, the mastermind behind this distribution of money from the Shareholders' Fund, is often mentioned.
Instructions: Website of the Treasury Department
The easiest option is to on the Treasury website check if they are registered. They should go to the site and click on the field - check whether you will automatically receive help from the Shareholder Fund and enter their JMBG there.
If they receive information that they are already registered, they will also receive information to which account the amount of 6.000 dinars will be paid. If they are not registered, they should click on the box below and prepare their ID card number.
Also, there is a possibility that a certain number of citizens have a problem with the application, which they can handle in a separate drop-down menu. There you need to explain the problem and leave your e-mail address and mobile phone number. Also, it is important to state whether the citizen is a beneficiary of social assistance or not.
Free shares of the Shareholder Fund
The check itself is simple even in the post office. Citizens should bring their identity card to the post office or Postal Savings Bank, where, based on their ID number, officials will be able to immediately tell them whether they have Shareholder Fund shares. When they are already there, they can check if they also have shares of NIS, Telekom, Belgrade Airport, for which there was once a registration.
Citizens are also advised to check the opening hours of the post office first, as numerous post offices that are not in the city center have introduced reduced working hours on different days. For example, the post office in Block 45 in New Belgrade is open on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 8 am to 2 pm, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1 pm to 7 pm. On Saturdays, it is open from 8 am to noon.
If it is determined that they have already been registered - they have solved the matter and should just wait for the payment.
Vučić's money, and our money: How the Equity Fund was created
Photo: Tanjug/Dragan KujundžićAleksandar Vučić hosts a reality show
The shareholder fund was formed in the midst of mass privatizations, so the money that Vučić allegedly gives to people is actually funds that they already own. It is interesting that he has now decided to divide them and that right in the pre-election period, even though his party did not participate in the process of beginning the privatization of companies, which began in Serbia in the early 2000s, and which first the radicals, and later the progressives "spit" whenever they had the opportunity.
The fund was created on the basis of the Law on the right to free shares and monetary compensation that citizens receive in the process of privatization, adopted in 2007, which began to function in 2010. At that time, approximately 4,8 million citizens were entitled to free shares - five shares of NIS, one share of Aerodrom Belgrade, 31 shares of Telekom Srbije and seven shares of the Shareholders' Fund.
The fund's assets were then increased through privatization, bankruptcy proceedings, share buybacks and dividend income. Although these shares were awarded more than a decade ago, some citizens are still unaware that they own them.
The collapse of the investigation into 24 privatizations and Siniša Mali
photo: filip krainčanić / tanjugAleksandar Vučić and Siniša Mali
As soon as he came to power, Vučić declared in 2013 that the investigations into all 24 controversial privatizations had been completed, as his government had promised, and that the international interference in the mistakes in this business shows that "we all have to change ourselves."
"We expect that in the coming period it will be shown that our courts judge independently, fairly, but that justice is effective. That we do not wait for it for 10 to 15 years."
However, precisely those 10-15 years later, court epilogues showed that most of these cases fell in court, expired or ended without convictions, while property and liability were not fundamentally resolved.
It turned out that many businessmen who collaborated with politicians, such as Milan Bek or Miroslav Mišković, but also Mlađan Dinkić, Maja Gojković and Siniša Malog, participated in the privatization process of these 24 companies. None of them were convicted for it, CINS research from 2018 showed.
Siniša Janković, a former member of the working group of the MUP, which investigated 24 cases, said then about the whole process:
"In 2012, we were given a free hand to work. And we worked on cases for two months at full speed. We were also asked to arrest, but we were directed in which direction to arrest. Then everything stopped. Except for one former minister and one deputy director in the NIS, all the others we arrested were marginal figures."
Application: Treasury Administration
Those who are not registered in the fund should go home and apply electronically through the portal of the Treasury Administration, at idp.trezor.gov.rs, and registration begins on September 7. A valid identity card, residence in Serbia and Serbian citizenship are required for the application.
Only the official portal of the Treasury Administration should be used for the payment application itself. Special caution is needed because of possible fake websites that look like government websites and can be used to collect personal data.
Pensioners and beneficiaries of cash social assistance receive payment automatically, regardless of whether they are registered in the Shareholders' Fund.
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