MUSAVO AND ABANDONED: Premises "22. December"
The former Kluz department store, a building located in the very center of Belgrade, is currently plastered with Madlenijanum theater posters and belongs to EC Investment, a company of the Cepter company. The rest of the building, which consists of the wings of the building with half-opened and dirty windows, is the property and headquarters of the ruined social enterprise "22. December", a former manufacturer of military uniforms and part of the Cluj company.
The company, which once owned the entire building of about 7300 square meters, the associated buildings in the yard behind the building and part of the public garage in Masarikova street, was slowly "privatized" over time by private and social business partners.
The first concrete "contact" with private capital, the company "22. December" was achieved in 1996, when it was in pre-bankruptcy proceedings. Then a crisis headquarters was hastily assembled, which sought salvation from collapse and loss of jobs for about 200 workers in the appointment of Slobodan Radišić, owner of the private company Ippon, as acting director of the social enterprise, which was not against the law at the time. Radišić, for whose private company Ippon "22. decembar" until then sewed suits and other heavy clothing, he took over the management of the company and, according to his own words, saved it from ruin. "I am the director of '22. of December' proposed settlements with his creditors and there I relied with all my strength on my private company which provided money, goods, support, market, as well as the possibility of 200 workers returning to work again after nine months of non-working and six years of losing balance sheet at the end of the year", claims Radisic. Giving money and other funds, at that moment, for the company "22. December" practically meant that it became exclusively a debtor of Radišić's private company. As part of all that, Radišić, as the director of the social enterprise "22. December" concluded an agreement with his private company on the establishment of some kind of joint repair and service center for machines and equipment, which is why the machines circulated between these two companies, often undocumented. In addition to the machines, the private company Ippon apparently also used warehouses "22. December" as its own storage space. In addition, some of the only few workers who have remained in "22. of December" testify that Radišić was a rather bad employer, who during his "mandate" paid workers only the minimum legal wages, which at that time amounted to around 230 dinars.
This rather dubious management of the social firm was terminated in 1999. Radišić claims that the Commercial Court in Belgrade "deleted" him from the position of director with falsified documents and appointed a new management board that took control of the company. He further states that Gojko Marjanović, then president of the municipality of Lebane and prominent member of JUL, was behind everything. Marjanović, with the help of the president of the Commercial Court, Milena Arežina, is then appointed as the president of the board of directors, and the VKV tailor, a sick and old man who dies two years later, is appointed to the position of director. When he was kicked out of his former company, Radišić filed a lawsuit claiming that at the time of the "July kidnapping" on "22 of December" the rest of his goods worth about 900.000 German marks. To date, his claims with associated interest have reportedly grown to some 2.500.000 euros and constitute, according to Radisic's claims, over 80 percent of the claims of all creditors. As the latest law on bankruptcy proceedings provides that in case of bankruptcy the so-called The Board of Creditors appointed by the Assembly of Creditors has the right to declare bankruptcy and sell assets to collect their claims, the former acting director felt it was his right to take control of the Board and collect his claim. However, at the meeting of May 16, 2002, at which this body was constituted, bankruptcy trustee Vasilije Krupniković disputed Radišić's claim and based on that, a committee was elected without Radišić, who responded to all this by filing new criminal charges and requests for exemption of all bankruptcy judges competent in this process. Krupniković justified his decision to contest Radišić's claims by the fact that Radišić did not provide sufficiently solid evidence that his claims were valid. "'22. December', where Radišić was the director, after two years of his work he owes the company he owns over 2.500.000 euros, and all other workers with all their salaries and pension and social insurance claim only between 30.000.000 and 40.000.000 dinars , which is at least five times less. Since he is now owed 2.500.000 euros, this means that he earned 100.000 euros per month for two years of working in this company. That's why I refused his requests, because this is the first case of a man suing himself because he incurred such a debt to himself," says Krupniković.
As usually happens when two people fight, the most tangible benefit in the end came from a third party. Namely, "22. December" has had problematic relations with Clouse for a long time, of which it was once a part. When in 1989, a new law on enterprises was passed that abolished OOURs, the then administration "22. December" made the decision to resign from Cluj. Contrary to the expectations of the management of the split company, Kluz does not decide to leave the space that once belonged to "22. December" and where the Cluj department store was in the meantime. Which is even worse according to "22. December", Cluse continues to use part of the building and makes bills for electricity, water and heating, all of which are borne by "22. December". After that, lawsuits and disputes continued until August 2001, when Cluse and "22. December" divide the building into parts, so that Clouseu remains the best, central part, and "22. December" side parts of the building. As "Vremena" sources explain, part of the building remained in Cluj because the exit from the Cluj system only applied to half of the company "22. December", on OOUR Proizvodnja, while OOUR Trade still remained within Cluj. After the conclusion of the agreement sponsored by the management board of Cluj and the disputed "July" management board "22. December", according to the claims of Slobodan Radišić, the property ended up in the hands of the Cepter company in an extremely suspicious way. He claims that immediately after concluding the court settlement, Cluz took a loan of 400.000 euros from Kapital banka Đorđe Nicović, mortgaging the aforementioned space. According to him, Kapital Bank sold that space to EC Investment for 1.200.000 euros.
Meanwhile, "22. December" in 2002 first leased and then sold a premises on the ground floor of the Mecena Group building for a small amount of 8.700.000 dinars for a premises of 140 square meters in the very center of Belgrade. Mecena Group further sold this location to Société Générale Bank, which opened its branch office there. Last Monday, the mandate of bankruptcy administrator Vasilij Krupniković expired, which is why the resolution of this legal tangle is expected only after the arrival of a new administrator, who has not yet been appointed. The old bankruptcy trustee says that he will be very happy to guide the new one through all 30 kilograms of documentation accompanying this case.
