No one from the Government has uttered a single word about the fate of NIS for months, ever since Vučić ate burek and drank wine for Viktor Orban in winter.
However, since when is businessman Ranko Mimović unknown to energy experts announced that he would give twice as much money to the Serbian Oil Industry as MOL, even the most inactive chairs of the executive power of Serbia turned around.
On the same day, Serbia learned that the Hungarian MOL, if it takes over NIS, could close its most valuable part - the refinery in Pancevo.
The Minister of Mining and Energy, Dubravka Đedović Handanović, stated on the same day that Serbia is not satisfied with the proposal of the Hungarian state company MOL and said that the negotiations will continue, but "not at any price". According to her, the disagreements primarily relate to the future work of the Oil Refinery and the crude oil processing capacity.
A day later, Đuro Macut, the prime minister who almost never said anything about NIS, said that the red line in the negotiations with Hungary is that the oil refinery in Pancevo must work and that there must be guarantees that Serbia is the primary decision maker in deciding what and how the company will produce.
Aleksandar Vučić also spoke to flatly reject Ranko Mimović's offer, although the media did not manage to find nearly enough money in Mimović's finances to buy NIS.
Why all the commotion?
IPOPEMA Securities' brokerage analyst Vladan Pavlović told "Danas" that the offer of a newly founded and unknown Serbian company to buy NIS looks like a new attempt to stall and is an indication that there is "nothing to come" from negotiations with MOL.
He assesses that the figure of two billion euros is "too big for an anonymous entity", which, in his opinion, raises the question of the credibility of the offer itself, and that this amount can indirectly indicate how much the stake in NIS was potentially valued in the talks with MOL, i.e. that the value was obviously less than two billion euros, if such an offer existed at all.
Economic analyst Bogdan Petrović assesses that the information about the offer of an unknown Serbian company for the purchase of NIS does not seem convincing for now, stating that from the available data it can be concluded that it is a frivolous offer or an attempt to raise the price of the company.
"Based on all the information, it would be said that the offer is not serious. The only way to explain this offer is that it might be a maneuver to raise the price of NIS," Petrović told "Danas".
Nenad Gujaničić, an analyst from the Momentum securities company, answering the question of who could be behind Mimović, tells Forbes:
"It is difficult to say who could be behind this story, which is irresistibly reminiscent of local privatization procedures or large stock market transactions when a company that was founded yesterday appears on the buying side. So, it is more than clear that the 'local kitchen' is in question, and the real question is in whose interest it was started, because the situation around NIS is already too complicated," says Gujaničić.
Who is Ranko Mimović?
"I don't know if it's a shame, but the first thing I did was to check who the man was," the director of a large energy company told "Vreme" after the news of the pompous offer. "It is true that I have been in this business for 40 years, but I do not believe that such a large investor would have missed me. So I myself would be the first to rush him to invest with me."
Regional media write about him that he has court cases and one first-instance sentence of 12 years in prison, which was annulled in Slovenia, while in Croatia, similar to now for NIS, he offered to buy Podravka.
His finances were also checked at the APR, the National Bank of Serbia, the Tax Administration, but nowhere near enough money was found to buy NIS.
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