Jorgovanka Tabaković: Ten years at the head of the National Bank of Serbia

For reasons that the public will probably never know, the governor of the National Bank of Serbia, Jorgovanka Tabaković, said the following on RTS on December 26, 2018:

"I cannot understand that someone asks me if the dinar is a time bomb, and the dinar was declared the second strongest currency in the world this year by Bloomberg, who is not at all friendly towards me or Serbia." In front of such an agency and the news that was explained, shouldn't someone be ashamed of criticizing the National Bank of Serbia or the policies of the Government of the Republic of Serbia?", and invited the unnamed don't to tell her "if the dinar is too strong, if life is bad in Serbia, if Serbia is respectable".

Unfortunately for the governor, the National Bank and the citizens, there is almost no correct information in this statement - namely, neither the Serbian dinar was declared the second strongest currency in the world (it is the Bahraini dinar), nor was the Bloomberg agency evaluating the currencies - it is about list that can be found on the Internet under the title "The world's 10 strongest currencies", and on the website Yahoo! India Finance.

Bloomberg, on the other hand, did write about the Serbian dinar, but in mid-March 2018 - when, even if they wanted to, they could not declare any currency the strongest. Writing about how much Serbian bonds yield, that is, what is the interest rate offered by Serbia, Bloomberg writes that dinar bonds with a dollar clause have an annual yield of five percent, and it is what has ranked the dinar in second place in the world: it gives the second highest return in the world to investors who invest in Serbian government securities. And that, of course, is not to be praised at all, because that interest is paid by the citizens of Serbia.

Second beginning

When someone just barely follows what is called politikom in Serbia, could argue that the above title is quite malicious. Because Jorgovanka Tabaković - although she has been at the top of the Serbian Radical Party for decades, and then the Serbian Progressive Party - is certainly not the first thing that comes to mind when talking about radicals, neo-radicals and their common denominator: understanding politics as a field where absolute everything is allowed to be said about a political opponent and where lying is a legitimate means of struggle.

Starting with Šešelj, Nikolić, Vučić and their gruesome statements and actions on the political scene in the last 30 years, through throwing shoes and throwing curses at Gordana Pop-Lazić and Vjerica Radeta, all the way to the newer "aces" established after the split of the Serbian Radical Party In 2008 (like Vladimir Đukanović, Nebojša Stefanović, Marko Đurić, Milenko Jovanov...), Jorgovanka Tabaković acted and he seems like someone who communicates in public at a level or two above them - without the inexhaustible amount of aggression, violent language and arrogant-boasting tone with which the aforementioned argue as soon as they open their mouths.

Photo-robot of the progressive cadre

But if we look share Jorgovanka Tabaković and narrowing down the selection to only the last six and a half years, when she has been at the head of the National Bank of Serbia (in June of last year, at the age of 58, she was confirmed for a second term), we get literally a photo-robot of a progressive in a high position: brought to an extremely important position along political lines, has a plagiarized doctorate, and during her stay in her current position she was associated with corruption, nepotism and censorship. If we add to this picture a detail from previous life, which was discovered by BIRN - and it is an apartment of 144 square meters, which, as a minister in the Government of Serbia, she bought in 2000 under extremely favorable conditions and fully paid off three years after hers came to power again - the picture is complete.

But let's start where Tamara Skrozza left off at the end of May 2012. Then Jorgovanka Tabaković, in strong post-election combinations, was mentioned as a progressive candidate for Prime Minister, and "Vreme" in issue 1117 published a portrait of a contemporary at that time - as it seemed, the future prime minister.

Both 2010 and 2011 passed in feverish calling and anticipation of parliamentary elections, and Jorgovanka Tabaković, as one of the leading figures of the Serbian Progressive Party, a pretender to power, gave statements and interviews to the press every now and then. This is the period in which the leading people of the progressives - Nikolić, Vučić, Tabaković, Stefanović - had countless appearances in the media, in what the current government will call a "media blockade" and "terror of the yellows". As a rule, Tabaković talked about the economy, talked about what will happen when the SNS comes to power (the government will have 12 ministries, only one vice president, the position of state secretaries will be abolished...), but she was not unfamiliar with the fact that, like Vučić, " odvali" that the external debt has grown to 33 billion dollars (April 2010). Certainly the biggest pearl was the announcement of "two big projects" - the development of the right bank of the Danube and the waterway from Velika Morava to Vardar and the Aegean Sea, "which can attract investments of 100 billion euros" (November 2011).

Resignation of Dejan Šoškić

She did not fail to criticize the DS government, and she did so with almost prophetic words: "The government in Serbia is slipping from democracy to tyranny, because the government does not deal with internal and foreign policy without authorization, they do not let the parliament deal with it, but that is why the President of Serbia deals with alone" (December 2011). After Boris Tadić and DS managed to lose first the presidential elections, and then they did not even manage to form a republican government, a week after the formation of the SNS-SPS-PUPS-URS government (Ljajić - Vulin - Ugljanin - Velimir Ilić), the previous Governor Dejan Soskic, under pressure, resigns.

He would have been replaced anyway - immediately after the formation of the new government, the Assembly received a proposal to amend the Law on NBS, because the removal of Šoškić required the support of the Council of Governors, which the new government did not have. Thus, the position of the NBS governor immediately went under the party's paw, contrary to the pre-election promises about departmentalization. By the way, the changes to the law were so good that already in November the same law was changed again, and Jorgovanka Tabaković took the place of the man she actually supported.

"I think that Šoškić started with some things that cannot immediately give results, but he hears and feels the reality and has my support for the beginning, which does not mean that I can really give up that place, but he really has my support." (...) Until the arrival of governor Dejan Šoškić, I was the most aspiring to the position of governor. Now I see that the man has started to work very nicely and seriously, so I'm thinking about something - maybe a ministerial post, not a governor's post." This is how Jorgovanka Tabaković thought about the then governor Dejan Šoškić in October 2011.

Stable dinar, stable inflation

Šoškić could be attributed to major failures in work: during his mandate, Agrobanka went "under ice", and inflation was in double digits in 2012. Therefore, the NBS failed to achieve any of its goals - the stability of the financial sector and controlled, low inflation. When we add to that what affected all citizens - the sudden fall of the dinar, despite the fact that the NBS sold more than a billion euros to defend the exchange rate - it cannot be said that Jorgovanka Tabaković, with her team (Ana Gligorijević, Diana Dragutinović and Veselin Pješčić as vice governors), had a brilliant situation that August 6, 2012.

The first moves were successful: the exchange rate was brought down and stabilized by a restrictive monetary policy, i.e. by increasing the reference interest rate from 10,25 to 11,75 percent, and already in 2013 inflation was below the predicted goal - only 2,2 percent. Such low inflation will remain until today, and the dinar is now, in January 2019, stronger than it was during the stormy year of 2012.

These two items - a stable dinar and stable inflation in the last six years - can undoubtedly be something that the governor and the NBS can boast about. Of course, one can talk about the bad influence of a strong domestic currency on exports, one can also criticize the fact that the NBS has actually for several years in a row pushed the defined corridor in which the inflation rate should be found (on the lower side), and therefore the budget had less income than of VAT than expected, but these, along with a large drop in non-performing loans, are certainly things that the NBS highlights as their success.

From Milan Beck to loans in Swiss francs

But there were also bad things. Although not nearly as much as during the period 2008-2012, Tabakovic had "excursions" outside the jurisdiction of the governor. Already in January 2013, she made the famous statement that Milan Beko "is not stepping on a rotten board."

"As far as I know Milan Bek, if he hasn't changed since we worked together in the Government, he is not stepping on a rotten board. He usually provides well in his affairs. He is a skilled man, he was involved in big business, he knows how to slip through loopholes in the law. Those who agreed to serve him and interpret the laws and those he used as gloves will suffer in his place. Not because someone is protecting him, but because he is intelligent," said the governor regarding the investigation regarding the Port of Belgrade.

Then in February of the same year - even though she "froze" her party function - she said that "election announcements represent an attempt to create conflict within the ruling coalition and to create a 'line of misunderstanding' among collaborators", as well as that she "does not see any real reason" for extraordinary elections.

On the occasion of the signing of the Brussels Agreement, she was emotional ("Don't blame me for pointing out the role of Aleksandar Vučić in that process, because I think it is significant because at no time did he show that he was fascinated by those who need to sell other people's goods, that is, instead of let them decide about us, and he didn't even show fear in front of those who have powerful protectors and demand much more than they deserve").

And then, explaining the recommendation that the NBS gave to the banks regarding loans in Swiss francs, she said that the banks do not have to accept it, but that she is convinced that "the banks will understand that this is primarily in their interest, because they they know what the NBS knows". The public was deprived of information - what is the NBS knows about commercial banks.

Official car and hacker attacks

In December 2013, news appeared on the Novi Sad Radio 021 website that Jorgovanka Tabaković's daughter, Milena, was provided with a company car and a driver by the Novi Sad branch of the Republic Institute for Health Insurance so that she could go to Belgrade for lectures twice a week and disappeared after three hours. Jorgovanka Tabaković sends an open letter to the media in which she says "that she cannot allow her children to be thrown into the mud without any evidence, as well as the institution she has to protect", and asks the media that "reported this false news to withdraw it immediately because she doesn't want her children to blush because of the monstrous lies that someone is hurling at her, her family and the institution of the governor of the NBS".

CINS publishes a text called "Truth has an expiration date", but that text also disappears due to a hacker attack. "We have information that other sites that reported the story were also hacked," Branko Chechen, director of CINS, said at the time.

The collapse of Privredna banka Beograd and Univerzal banka

In October 2013, Privredna banka Beograd (PBB) collapsed, and at the beginning of 2014, also Univerzal banka. In February, the largest shareholder of Univerzal Bank, Nebojša Divljan, made accusations against the NBS - he says that in May 2013 he sent a letter to the governor of the NBS, Jorgovanka Tabaković, "informing her of serious irregularities and that UBB is operating outside the law", and that he demanded an urgent emergency control banks.

"I did not receive any response to the request, and I understood the silence of the NBS as support for the bank's management, and then I withdrew to the status of a passive shareholder, because participation in the work of the bank's authorities was useless," said Divljan, adding that the NBS had "a peer supervision " over Universal Bank and "that it could have prevented the collapse of the bank a year ago, when UBB had a regulatory capital of 1,8 billion dinars".

Also, the newspaper "Danas" wrote on several occasions about the connection between Siniša Malog (then the advisor of Aleksandar Vučić), Ivica Kojić, and the NBS with Miroslav Bogićević, the former owner of the company Farmak, which caused the collapse of PBB: the management of this state bank was " forbidden to independently take any collection measures against Farmakom and all persons connected with it" - the biggest debtor of the bank.

At the same time, "Danas" revealed that in December 2012, Jorgovanka Tabaković personally intervened so that Bogićević's Farmakom could get a loan from a Dutch bank of 25 million euros, although the repayment plan for that loan was not in accordance with Serbian regulations. The NBS first refused to register the loan, Bogićević went to visit Jorgovanka Tabaković, and the next day the NBS released the disputed loan.

"Assassination" and "PhD"

In September 2014, the intrusion of burglars into her hotel room in Montenegro, who took her suitcase with personal belongings, was declared by the governor of Malta as an assassination attempt: "Maybe they wanted the execution to look like a natural death." Heart attack from stress or replaced drugs. I don't know. Maybe."

In December 2016, CINS, after barely receiving Jorgovanka Tabaković's doctorate, announced that Tabaković had "plagiarized a significant part of the doctorate": "The doctorate of the Governor of the National Bank of Serbia is full of verbatim copied passages of other authors without citations," writes CINS, adding that is more than 20 percent of the text "taken without citation". Jorgovanka Tabaković's mentor was Milenko Dželetović, also a high-ranking member of the SNS.

Dina card promotion

Although the governor, Jorgovanka Tabaković speaks at the SNS main board before the 2017 presidential elections, and in May of the same year she confesses:

"I'm not happy that Aleksandar Vučić will no longer be the prime minister, I'm worried about whether someone who is knowledgeable about the budget, responsible and has that kind of commitment will come. (…) Only he can calculate in just three minutes the fiscal risks of, for example, hiring a professor of electrical engineering to stimulate IT, and not only for the given moment but also in the medium term."

In August 2017, when it was clear that there was nothing to do with the projected GDP growth of three percent, Tabaković and the NBS - something like the director of the RZS and his calculation that it is "most likely" that the salary will be 2018 euros by the end of 500 - came out with estimating that in the second half of 2017 GDP will have to jump five percent for the total growth to be three, and that the NBS still expects that goal to be achieved. Just as much as a salary of 500 euros - a good example of the destruction of institutions for the sake of daily politics.

Finally, just after she was elected to her second term, Jorgovanka Tabaković publicly promoted the mandatory introduction of the Dina card. One of the companies that will earn from the processing of Dina card transactions is Chip Card, which is behind the company Aseko, in which the brother of Prime Minister Ana Brnabić, Igor, is one of the directors.

"Time" number 1462, 09 January 2019.

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