Due to a debt of 1,6 million, Banja Luka's Komercijalna Bank has announced the sale of the villa Beskuća, in the heart of Kotor's Old Town, owned by Vojin Lazarevic, the former largest electricity trader in Southeast Europe.
The Serbian tycoon of Montenegrin origin originally pledged the valuable palace, a cultural monument from 1776, which he bought almost two decades ago, as a mortgage for a loan of 20 million euros with Hypo Alpe Adria Bank Internacional Klagenfurt.
Three years ago, Lazarevic took a million credit line from two related banks, namely 1,6 million euros from Komercijalna banka AD Banja Luka, and 12 million euros from Komercijalna banka Beograd.
Non-compliance with credit obligations cost Lazarevic dearly.
Banja Luka Bank was the first to initiate collection through its attorney, the law office of Tomislav Miranović from Podgorica.
The bank enters in the cadastral records of the Real Estate Administration a prohibition of alienation and disposal, in order to secure the loaned money, in order to publish the notification about the beginning of the settlement of the credit debt in April of this year.
Since Lazarevic had not paid his obligations in the previous half year, the bank through its lawyer announced the sale of the villa, which was officially registered the day before yesterday as an encumbrance in the cadastral records.
On the plot is a three-story palace with a total area of 1.348 square meters, which, as stated, was bought by Lazarevic and is the sole owner.
The investigative journalist network BIRN Serbia recently announced that Lazarevic is bankrupt and owes 11,6 billion dinars, which is why banks have already started selling his properties in Albania, not far from the Port of Durrës, where he and his partners planned to build a gas terminal and oil.
According to the Serbian media, Lazarevic experienced a collapse in February of last year, when he was blocked by the German "Thiessen Krupp Materials" due to a debt of 20 million euros, and then by domestic banks for 2,6 billion dinars, which initiated bankruptcy.
Although Lazarevic prepared a reorganization plan to prevent the sale of property, banks in Albania, as reported by BIRN, took away 15 of the total 20 hectares of land due to unpaid loans. In 1992, he founded the company Pima in Kotor, of which he is still the majority owner.
In addition to business, he was also involved in politics, for years he was one of the influential people gathered around the People's Party (NS), which was in coalition with Milo Đukanović's regime for many years.
From 1992 to 1996, he was a member of the Montenegrin and federal parliaments.
He was a member of the Management Board of Jugopetrol and Elektroprivreda Crne Gore.
Before the electricity business, Lazarevic was an advisor to former Prime Minister Filip Vujanović, the current president of Montenegro.
With their partner Vuk Hamović, they start one of the strongest businesses and become the main players on the Balkan electricity market, which brings them millions of profits. In 1997, with the help of Hamović, he entered the electricity trade for the needs of Montenegro.
Soon he became a shareholder and vice-president of the board of directors in Hamović's London company EFT, which received lucrative deals in the purchase and sale of surplus electricity from the electricity companies of the Republic of Srpska, Montenegro and Serbia.
Cultural monument from 1776
The Beskuć Palace is a cultural monument of the third category and, as stated in the book "One Hundred Jewels of Kotor", it belonged to the Beskuć family from Prčanje.
The Beskuć family became rich at the end of the XNUMXth century, because they were engaged in maritime trade. The family then also gained nobility and had numerous properties and houses in Boka Kotorska, especially in Prčanje, Kamenari and Tivat, but also in Venice and Constantinople.
She had a beautiful baroque palace in Prčanje. In the city of Verona, she had her fief, called Quaderni.
Family legend says that the Beskućs came to Prčanj from Strp, as homeless people, but that they quickly became rich, so that Count Jozo Beskuć already had 99 houses, in Boka and Italy.
He wanted to become the owner of a hundred houses and change his surname to Stokuć, but he did not succeed.
At the beginning of the XNUMXth century, the palace became the property of the Municipality of Kotor, and the then Austrian government housed the Kotor District Court in it, in whose archive the books of Kotor notaries from the XNUMXth to the XNUMXth century were kept, one of the most valuable collections of the historical archive in Kotor.
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