Jerg Heskens has been an advisor to the President of Serbia for 13 years Aleksandar Vučić for German investments, and since it is paid by the German government, it opens a series of constitutional, legal and political-security issues, writes BIRN.
BIRN and SPIEGEL reveal details of Heskens' engagement from 2020 to present - secret meetings and plans on "Jadar" project before and after its hitchhiking, as well as the finances that Germany decided to support mining in the midst of student protests.
In February 2023, at the opening of the factory of the German company Kontinental in Novi Sad, Vučić stated that he calls Heskens "my Swabian" and that Heskens calls him "my wild A Serb".
Heskens is really like Vučić's shadow, considering that he is one of his longest-term collaborators who has been advising him continuously since September 2013.
He advised Vučić when he was the Minister of Defense and Deputy Prime Minister, and then also during the time when he held the office of Prime Minister. After the presidential elections in 2017, together with Vučić, he moved to the cabinet in Andrićevo venc, where he still resides today.
The investigation by BIRN and the German magazine Spiegel is based on documentation that BIRN collected for more than six months from German institutions under the Act on the Availability of Information of Public Importance - which relates to the engagement of Heskens from 2020 to the present day.
The research shows that in the era of Aleksandar Vučić, Serbia became a "service economy of the German economy" and that the representatives of the German authorities saw in Vučić a figure with whom they could directly contract business.
"In that function, he (Heskens) greatly contributes to the direct representation of the interests of the German economy with Vučić," states the preparatory document on the engagement of Heskens from June 2020, which BIRN/Spiegel had access to.
According to the official reports on their activities, it can be concluded that the deals that were agreed and coordinated far intruded into the affairs of the Government of Serbia, and that they had little or no connection with the cabinet of the President of Serbia, according to the research.
The situation is further complicated since August 25, 2020, when the German Ministry of Economy and Energy (BMWK) signed an agreement on the establishment of an "institutional partnership" with President Vucic on August 25, 2020 - with Heskens as the contact point.
Let's just temporarily stop the "Jadar" project
The documentation they obtained shows that the cooperation between Vučić and Germany is becoming primarily focused on the lithium mining project in western Serbia. At the time of the signing of the agreement, the Serbian public was not aware of Germany's role in the project and their agreements with President Vučić.
BIRN/Spiegel reveal that the "Jadar" project remained a priority of the German partnership with Vučić even during last year's large civil protests led by students, and after the death of 16 people after the fall of a canopy in Novi Sad.
Cooperation on the development of the 2025 project has been further specified, as Berlin has allocated 4.9 million euros to help with the implementation of the "Jadar" project, and the arrival of German experts who should advise the Serbian institutions in charge of approving mining projects has also been agreed.
Also, the documentation they obtained suggests that it was clear to the authorities in advance that the stoppage of the project before the 2022 elections was temporary, considering that only a month after the April elections, Vučić and then German Chancellor Olaf Scholz discussed restarting the project "despite the concerns of part of the Serbian population".
BIRN also reveals that the signing of the Memorandum on cooperation in the field of critical raw materials with the EU during the visit to Solac in July 2024 was prepared months earlier as part of the cooperation between Vučić and Germany, i.e. before the decision of the Constitutional Court which legally rehabilitated the "Jadar" project.
Bieber: It is clear that the story about stopping the "Jadar" project in 2022 was false
Florian Biber, a professor at the University of Graz, tells BIRN that by partnering with Vučić, "the German government is actually supporting the constitutional abuse that Vučić is carrying out by controlling everything."
"I think that if any document faithfully embodies stabilidocracy - then it's this one, isn't it? In the sense that it says: you know, it doesn't matter to us legally who is in charge. Of course, from a constitutional point of view, the president has nothing to do with the Green Deal, with mining, or even with economic policy," says Bieber, who also popularized the term "stabilocracy", which describes the cooperation of Western countries with non-democratic regimes in the Balkans due to political-economic interests, with disregard for the rule of law and democratic procedures.
The professor also emphasizes that it is clear that the whole story about stopping the "Jadar" project in 2022 was false.
"It is interesting that this cooperation suggests that Germany was complicit in this, that the German government knew that Serbia had never given up on the project and that it was part of it - which was basically a cover-up, because the Serbian government claimed that the project had been suspended," Biber emphasized to BIRN.
Photo: Strahinja AćimovićAleksandar Vučić
Heskens has a luxury apartment in "Belgrade on the water"
Forty-nine-year-old Jerg Heskens has been living in the Balkans for many years and is married to a Serbian citizen, writes BIRN. In an interview, he states that he served and studied in Sarajevo, Zagreb and Belgrade. Although he is an employee of the German government, Heskens also started a private business in Serbia - he is a co-owner of the company Happy Hazelnuts doo, which is registered for growing fruit, in which he owns a 41.6 percent stake. The company was founded in 2021, but has no significant income.
He is also the owner of at least two apartments in Belgrade. One of them is in a luxury building in the "Belgrade on the Water" neighborhood, a controversial project that critics consider a symbol of corruption and abuse of Vučić's power, writes BIRN.
In a statement to the German magazine Welt in February 2019, Heskens defended the project, noting that "much was not transparent, but in the end the contracts were published", and that "Belgrade will profit economically".
Already the following year, he bought a 112 m² apartment in "Belgrade on the water" on a loan of 230.000 euros - and that while it was under construction, according to cadastral data. The current value of the apartment is conservatively estimated at over half a million euros, given that the price per square meter at that address does not go below 5.000 euros.
Support for the "Jadar" project
After 13 years of cooperation, Heskens and Vučić are also considered friends, says a BIRN source familiar with their relationship, so it is not surprising that Heskens gives Vučić praise that goes beyond the scope of diplomatic neutrality.
"In Serbia, two million people vote for the president because they are better off economically, not because they watch those 'weird' televisions," Heskens said in January of this year.
Vučić designated Heskens, as stated in the cooperation report for the period from December 2021 to June 2022, as the direct point of contact for the German Federal Office for Lithium Matters.
BIRN's source from diplomatic circles claims that Heskens supported the "Jadar" project, even when individuals from the German embassy in Belgrade pointed out that Germany should not push it due to public opposition.
When asked why the agreement was signed directly with the president of Serbia, who has no competence in economic affairs, the German Ministry of Economy and Energy answered for BIRN: "It is up to the Serbian government to determine the appropriate partner within the government for bilateral cooperation."
It also states that the partnership "has been very successful in establishing and expanding the production facilities of German SMEs" and in providing "intensive advice to the Serbian government in the development of administrative frameworks for mining regulations, permitting procedures and environmental impact assessments".
You can read the full text on BIRN's website.
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