A network of companies engaged in various activities is registered in Russia in the name of Nenad Popović, a former minister in two Serbian governments who was put on the list of sanctions by the United States due to business ties with sanctioned Russian companies.
In addition to Popović, who is a coalition partner of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) also sanctioned Miša Vacić, the leader of the pro-Russian Serbian Right, on November 16.
Nenad Popović, the founder and president of the conservative and Eurosceptic Serbian People's Party, has been considered the voice of Russia on the Serbian political scene for years.
Radio Free Europe (RSE) analyzed the wide network of companies that Popović controls in Russia, by looking into business registers. They are engaged in various activities - from consulting to the delivery of equipment for nuclear power plants.
Popović's companies
Nenad Popović is the owner of two holding companies registered in Moscow "Asset Electro" and "Asset Automation".
From these two companies, a large, complex network of daughter companies spreads, so according to the data of the international database of Spark business registers, at least 14 companies of various activities are associated with its name.
On Thursday, OFAC placed 12 companies linked to Popović on its sanctions list.
In the explanation for such a decision, the US states that Popovic "uses connections with the Kremlin to secure business for his companies in Russia, most of which operate in the consulting, real estate and electronics sectors, in order to build personal wealth through embezzlement and tax schemes."
RSE journalists analyzed how the scheme of these numerous companies works.
According to Spark data, a large number are in financial problems, and the activities for which they are registered are diverse, from the production of electrical energy distribution devices, through the production of complex electronic parts, consulting services, financial investments to real estate business.
Part of the work is conducted from Moscow, and part is located in the city of Chebuksary in the Republic of Chuvashia in the central-eastern part of Russia.
According to Spark, Nenad Popović founded the company "ABS Electro" in Moscow in 2012, which changed its name to "Asset Electro" at the beginning of last year. The main activity is the activity of holding companies.
"Asset Electro" had a net profit of 800 euros last year, and almost all of its income was generated by paying dividends.
When it comes to contracts with Russian state institutions, Popović's firm had two contracts for consulting services with the Moscow Export Center.
The daughter company of this company is the company "VNIIR", whose full name is Joint Stock Company "All-Russian Research, Project and Technological Institute for Relay Structures with Pilot Production".
The main activity is the production of devices for the distribution and control of electricity. It was founded in 1996 and has 230 employees. Operating income was $2,5 million last year. During the last couple of years, it received support from the Russian state for small and medium-sized enterprises.
According to data from the Spark database, it had as many as 112 contracts with state institutions in Russia.
The company "VNIIR" branches out to several companies that primarily deal with the distribution of electricity, one with computer programming.
Contracts for the supply of equipment for nuclear power plants
Popović's other holding company "Asset Automation" has also been operating for 11 years. Last year, it had a net profit of around half a million euros. The entire income was also from the collection of dividends.
The company has several daughter companies, and the most important in this chain is the joint-stock company "ABS ZEIM Automation", which states on its website that it is "the leading Russian manufacturer of electric drives and complex automation equipment".
It used to be called the "Chebuskar Institute of Electronics and Mechanics", and was founded back in 1992. Last year, more than 800 workers worked in this company, and during that time it made a profit of seven million euros. The company concluded as many as 143 contracts with Russian state institutions.
The company signed two of its largest contracts with the state-owned factories "Rosenergoat" and the Ural Electromechanical Factory. Both are under the sanctions of Ukraine.
The first company manages 11 Russian nuclear power plants and 38 reactors.
When it comes to the Ural electromechanical factory, it is stated in the registers that it produces electromechanical components for nuclear systems.
What did Popović report as his property to the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption
In the last asset report to the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption, Nenad Popović reported the ownership of 19 companies. The six companies he registered in Serbia were liquidated at the end of 2022.
According to the data submitted to the Agency, seven companies owned by Popović are based in Moscow and six in Cyprus.
The companies that Nenad Popović had in Serbia were liquidated in December last year. Four were registered for development of construction projects ("SSN Group 011", "First Group doo", "World Time doo", "SSN International 011"), one for real estate rental ("RESReality Invest") and one for wholesale trade ("Atlas World").
The trading company "Atlas World" was closed down, and its property - a 150-square-meter apartment in the center of Belgrade - was transferred in November of this year to the company "Totally 011" from Novi Sad, which, according to the official registers, is now the only active company of Nenad Popović in Serbia.
This company, registered for the development of construction projects, was blocked from the end of 2017 until September of this year.
Privatization of Minel's factories
Nenad Popović acquired his first capital in Russia, where in 1994 he founded the company ABS Holdings.
In 2005, he announced that he would be involved in the privatization of electricity production in Serbia and soon bought six companies from the former Minel Concern.
Minel's factories were once suppliers of the Electric Power Company of Serbia and large exporters. After they were privatized by Nenad Popović, they went bankrupt.
The workers of the failed factory "Minel transformers" from Ripnje filed criminal charges against Popović in 2012 due to the suspicion that he deliberately led the company to multimillion-dollar debts and bankruptcy in order to further enrich himself.
The Anti-Corruption Agency repeatedly sent letters to prosecutors insisting that this case be investigated. No investigation has been initiated.
Nenad Popović did not respond to calls and messages from Radio Free Europe to comment on the United States' sanctions against him. The answer did not arrive from Popović's Serbian People's Party, to which RSE sent questions about this case by email.
Political biography of Nenad Popović
Nenad Popović was a member of the conservative Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) from its founding in 1992 until 2014. For the past nine years, he has led the Serbian People's Party (SNP), of which he is the founder.
After the October 2006th changes in Serbia, the DSS became part of the ruling coalition, and in XNUMX, Popović became the vice president of the Coordination Center of Serbia for Kosovo and the head of the Economic Team for Kosovo and southern Serbia.
As an official of the Democratic Party of Serbia, he was a deputy in two convocations - in 2008 and 2012.
Popović is a deputy in the current convocation of the National Assembly, which he entered as part of the electoral list led by the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).
SNS did not respond to RSE's letter to comment on the sanctions against Popović.
Political ties with Russia
What unites Popović's previous and current parties, the DSS and the SNP, are their close ties to United Russia, the party led by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In 2007, the Democratic Party of Serbia and United Russia signed an inter-party agreement that envisages cooperation between the two parties to strengthen Serbian-Russian relations in the fields of politics, economy, education, culture and spirituality. As a representative of the DSS, Popović attended congresses of Putin's party in Moscow on several occasions.
After founding the SNP, Popović signed an inter-party agreement with United Russia in April 2016. It was ten days before the parliamentary elections held on April 24, in which Popović's party was part of a broad coalition led by the Serbian Progressive Party.
He is a regular participant in the "Immortal Regiment" march, which has been organized in Belgrade for the past seven years on May 9, to mark the Victory Day over fascism and Nazism. It is a "franchise" of the event of the same name, which has been held in Moscow since 2011.
Against sanctions against Russia
The invasion of Ukraine launched by the Kremlin in February 2022 found Nenad Popović in the position of minister without portfolio in the Government of Serbia. From that position, he repeated what the state leadership had previously announced - that official Belgrade will not impose sanctions on Russia, even though the European Union, whose membership Serbia is declaratively striving for, has repeatedly insisted on this.
Popović also expressed his support for Russia in March 2017, when, as president of the SNP, he was a guest at the central ceremony in Crimea, which was organized on the occasion of the third anniversary of the Russian annexation of that Ukrainian peninsula. In his speech in the Crimean parliament, Popović said that "Crimea has always been an integral and inalienable part of Russia."
On the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, where about 60 percent of the population is Russian, in March 2014 the local government organized a referendum on joining the Russian Federation. 96 percent of voters voted in favor, and most Western countries did not recognize the results of the referendum.
At the time, Serbia did not recognize Crimea as part of Russia, but neither did it join the Western sanctions against the Kremlin due to the annexation, which the EU and the US consider illegal.
Strongly against joining the EU
In 2008, Nenad Popović was one of the laureates of the "Most European" award, which is awarded by the non-governmental European Movement in Serbia with the support of the European Commission to the most deserving individuals for "European activities".
Commenting on that recognition, Popović said in an interview for the magazine "Economist" in February 2008 that there is a "false dilemma" surrounding the choice between America, the EU and Russia.
However, in 2014, as vice-president of DSS, he stated in an interview for the weekly "Vreme" that his party stands for "the best possible relations with all countries in the European Union, but without any interest in joining the EU."
Nenad Popović expressed a harsher position as a minister without portfolio in the Government of Serbia in July 2019.
"The Brussels agreement is dead. We must challenge the false statehood of Kosovo in every place and improve our relations with Russia and China even more," Popović wrote on Twitter.
The statement was condemned by Prime Minister Ana Brnabić and President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić.
Proponent of the sale of NIS
At the time he was a DSS official, Nenad Popović was a vocal proponent of the sale of the Oil Industry of Serbia (NIS) to Russia's Gazprom. As a member of that party, in September 2008 he declared in the Serbian Parliament that it was "the best economic agreement that Serbia has signed in the last 40 years".
The oil industry of Serbia, which until then was a public company, was sold to the Russian state company Gazprom Neft for 2008 million euros in 400 without a tender, as part of the oil and gas arrangement between Serbia and the Russian Federation.
From June 2017 to October 2020, he served as the Minister for Innovation and Technological Development in the Government of the Republic of Serbia led by Ana Brnabić. In October 2020, he was elected as a minister without portfolio in the Government of the Republic of Serbia.
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