A recently established Serbian company has offered two billion euros to the Russian companies Gazprom Neft and Gazprom for their joint 56.1 per cent stake in NIS, which operates Serbia’s only oil refinery, its owner Ranko Mimović said.
The Russian owners of NIS have “in principle accepted the offer”, Reuters quoted him as saying.
The offer by KFT Senator Treasury G.T.7 Dva DOO, founded last summer, poses a challenge to the Hungarian company MOL, which is attempting to purchase a majority stake in NIS.
According to data from the Serbian Business Registers Agency, the company KFT Senator Treasury G.T.7 DOO was established in March 2023 with founding capital of 207 billion dinars, but ceased to exist in August 2025, when it split into KFT Senator Treasury G.T.7 Dva DOO and KFT Senator Treasury G.T.7 Jedan DOO. The total founding capital of the two new companies is equal to the founding capital of the company established in 2023.
According to the Serbian Business Registers Agency, KFT Senator Treasury G.T.7 Dva DOO has active status, although it is listed as having its account blocked due to a debt of 9,508 dinars.
NIS has been under American sanctions since October last year, and the fate of the company – the artery of the entire Serbian economy – should become known within the next twenty days or so.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the United States Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on NIS as part of broader measures targeting the Russian energy sector because of the war in Ukraine. Washington demanded that the shares in NIS owned by Gazprom Neft and Gazprom, its Russian majority owners, be sold, or transferred to another entity not connected to Russia.
“Gazprom Neft is actively preparing the sale of its shareholding in NIS to the Hungarian company MOL. The necessary corporate and regulatory procedures are under way. The company is not conducting any other negotiations on this matter,” a statement from Gazprom Neft sent by email said.
Gazprom and NIS did not immediately respond to Reuters’ questions sent by email.
The Senator Company stated that on 30 October it initiated proceedings before OFAC in order to secure approval for the purchase of a majority stake in NIS, and that on 4 November it informed Gazprom Neft of its plans. The OFAC website states that the request is “under management review”.
Gazprom holds an 11.3 per cent stake in NIS, while Gazprom Neft owns 44.9 per cent. The Serbian state owns 29.9 per cent, while the remainder is held by small shareholders and employees. On 19 January, MOL signed an agreement to purchase the joint stake of Gazprom Neft and Gazprom in NIS.
OFAC gave the Russian companies a deadline until 22 May to complete the sale, while Serbian officials previously said they were trying to increase Serbia’s stake in the ownership structure by an additional five per cent.
Mimović also said that on 21 April he informed the office of the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, about his plans. Vučić’s office did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
On 26 January, Vučić said that MOL was prepared to pay one billion euros for a majority stake in NIS. Serbian Minister of Mining and Energy Dubravka Đedović Handanović said she expects negotiations between Serbia and MOL to be completed by 16 May, assessing that the talks are “going quite well”.
“We expect that by then (16 May) the conditions will be created for certain information to be shared with America, which must approve the agreement,” the minister added.
Who is Ranko Mimović?
Mimović was born in 1960 and managed several companies during his career, amid numerous controversies surrounding their operations. He is linked to at least nine companies registered in Serbia, eight of which are no longer operating, while one of the remaining companies has had its tax identification number temporarily revoked and another has had its bank account blocked, Forbes Serbia writes.
He was the director of the Slovenian company United Alpe-Adria Limited, which provided management consultancy services, but held that position only from August 2007 to May 2008, according to data from the UK Companies Register. He was also director of the Ljubljana-based company CPL, which was engaged in road construction, and in 2014, he was sentenced to two years in prison and fined €100,000 for fraud committed while managing the company. Although he claimed upon arriving at court that the proceedings were politically motivated, he admitted guilt on two counts of the indictment.
In 2010, Mimović announced that through his Serbian company FIA Invest, he would acquire more than 10 per cent ownership in the Croatian company Podravka, even though his accounts were blocked at the time. He claimed that he had done so by purchasing the Maltese company Fima Ami, which owned those shares, adding that he had invested €60 million in Podravka. The Croatian Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organised Crime (USKOK) launched an investigation into the deal.
Former Croatian Deputy Prime Minister Damir Polančec and Zoran Marković, director of Fima Ami, were also detained at the time.
(BBC Serbia, Naslovi.net, 07.05.2026)