The Prosecutor’s Office for Organised Crime (TOK) has received the names of individuals and companies that paid significant sums of money into the Vista Rica investment fund, although even without that information, based on publicly available data, this office could have launched a preliminary investigation. Such proceedings have already been initiated against at least four businessmen close to the SNS, but the potential list does not end there, Radar unofficially learns.
Among them is Zoran Popović, chairman of the Supervisory Board of Vista Rica and a close associate of the fund’s largest individual owner, Tatjana Vukić, in many of her business ventures. In addition to serving as chairman of the Supervisory Board of the fund, in which Vojislav Nedić, the father of the recently former Secretary General of the Government of Serbia Novak Nedić, and Srđan Davidović also each hold a 25 percent stake, Popović is also one of Vista Rica’s clients. He has made several payments into the fund he is supposed to supervise, totalling 4.1 million dinars or about 35,000 euros. In the first tranche, he paid 350,000 dinars, in the second 1.95 million, in the third 300,000, in the fourth one million, and in the fifth and final tranche, half a million dinars.
Close ties between Popović and Tatjana Vukić
In addition to the Serbian Prosecutor’s Office for Organised Crime, Italian authorities reportedly once showed interest in some of Popović’s business activities because of his investments in Livorno. For some time he has been the right-hand man of Tatjana Vukić, who is very close to the Vučić brothers. Evidence of this is the fact that until April 2024, he was the director of her company A Mi Manera.
Popović’s extensive business experience does not end there, as he is at the same time the sole owner of the company Camino Verde, which in 2024 recorded a net profit of 107.6 million dinars, and he is also a co-owner of several other companies. Specifically, he holds a 38 percent stake in Enterprise Communications Solutions, where one of his partners is Nikola Tabaković, the son of the Governor of the National Bank of Serbia, Jorgovanka Tabaković.
Radar was the first to reveal that this company was granted privileged and lucrative business with banks and state institutions worth millions of euros, which was discussed in the article Tatjana Vukić and the governor’s son in a privileged business deal with banks. It is also indicative that Vista Rica, A Mi Manera, Enterprise Communications Solutions and several other companies co-owned by Tatjana Vukić are located at the same address in Heroja Milana Tepića Street in Belgrade.
In addition, Popović is the beneficial owner of 25 percent stakes in Green Energy 360, GWH and Suntech, while his partners in all three companies are Veselin Jevrosimović with 50 percent and Olivera Krstić with 25 percent. According to specialised business portals, he is also an indirect owner of the company Green News and a member of the Board of Directors of Bank of China Serbia.
In addition to Popović, the attention of the Prosecutor’s Office for Organised Crime has also been drawn to the winners of numerous lucrative state tenders, the married couple Dane and Anđela Šijan and the companies associated with them, as well as Manojlo Mandrapa, against whom proceedings have already been conducted in the Special Court over financial irregularities involving some of his companies.
Spouses and business partners
Dane Šijan has come under the scrutiny of the Prosecutor’s Office for Organised Crime, Radar unofficially learns, partly because he invested 53.2 million dinars in the fund controlled by the SNS, while his wife Anđela invested another 49.6 million. These were apparently not their only investments in the Vista Rica fund. Until April 2023, Šijan was the sole owner of the company T&M Group Solutions, which became known to the wider public because it transported voters from Bosnia and Herzegovina, more precisely from Republika Srpska, to local elections in Belgrade in December 2023, even though under current laws those with dual citizenship may participate only in parliamentary elections but not in local ones.
Šijan’s former company T&M Group Solutions concluded 181 contracts with the state through tenders, either independently or as part of a consortium, worth more than 15.3 billion dinars or about 130 million euros by the beginning of last year. Recently, the Serbian electricity distribution company awarded that firm and its partners a new contract worth around 20 million euros or 2.4 billion dinars for meter reading services. Before that, T&M Group concluded a contract worth just over one billion dinars with the Post of Serbia, two contracts worth 902 million and 877 million dinars with the National Employment Service, one worth 845 million with the Republic Health Insurance Fund, and another worth 650 million with the Pension and Disability Insurance Fund.
Šijan is currently the sole owner of T&M Aviation, which according to official data has not yet had business arrangements with state institutions or companies and is registered for passenger air transport. The director of Šijan’s company is Mihajlo Popović, who is also the legal representative of Maxxim Investment, the sole owner of Zemun River, and a co-owner of the company Cosmo Entertainment, and until last September he was also a co-owner of the company Fun Time. In addition, Popović previously owned or co-owned MP Group LLC and Maxim Invest, although both companies have since been liquidated.
The public also heard about Šijan when he was detained in Montenegro together with his colleague, former handball player Vladimir Mandić, ahead of the local elections in Nikšić in March 2021, on suspicion of illegally bringing money into the country and assisting the coalition gathered around the Democratic Front. Šijan had previously supported the SNS, while Mandić has been seen several times in the company of enforcers in Ćacilend and in many places where local elections were held last year. They are also connected by the fact that Jasmina Trnavac, who has been Mandić’s wife since February last year, is also a client of the Vista Rica fund and has paid 52.8 million dinars into it.
Mandrapa under scrutiny on suspicion of withdrawing cash and investing it in Vista Rica
The Prosecutor’s Office for Organised Crime is also conducting a preliminary investigation into suspicious transactions linked to the Vista Rica fund involving their acquaintance Manojlo Mandrapa, who was arrested on their order in early 2021 and is currently on trial as part of an organised group for financial irregularities. Part of the money that Mandrapa’s company Tajm Partner received through state tenders, specifically contracts with healthcare institutions, was withdrawn in cash and then paid into the fund, Radar unofficially learns. The Prosecutor’s Office suspects that around one million euros may have been paid into the Vista Rica account in this way.
The proceedings initiated by the Prosecutor’s Office against Mandrapa apparently did not prevent his company Time Partner from continuing to secure lucrative contracts. After Mandrapa’s arrest on 25 January 2021 and until the end of 2024, his company won 27 tenders. The three most lucrative contracts, worth more than 15 million euros, were concluded precisely during the period when proceedings against its owner were ongoing: two contracts worth nearly 519 million and 877.2 million dinars with the National Employment Service and one worth 388.4 million with the Pension and Disability Insurance Fund, whose director, SNS official Relja Ognjenović, also paid one million dinars into the Vista Rica fund.
The Prosecutor’s Office accuses the group of which Mandrapa is a member of operating from March 2019 until 1 June 2020 with the aim of unlawfully obtaining financial gain through money laundering and tax evasion. Although it is one of the few investigations into money laundering, no officials have publicly said a word about it so far. The Prosecutor’s Office has identified Slobodan Zdravković as one of the leaders of the group, who is suspected of controlling as many as four companies: Vip Security, Emporio Tim, Tisten Group and Tajm Partner.
A criminal complaint also filed with TOK against Nenad Stefanović regarding Danijela Maletić
The Prosecutor’s Office for Organised Crime also bears significant responsibility for uncovering all these and many other similar cases. This is particularly so because the authorities have targeted and are persecuting Danijela Maletić, until a year ago an assistant director of the Administration for the Prevention of Money Laundering. The persecution intensified after she gave an interview to Radar following her unlawful detention at the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade, in which she revealed that Tatjana Vukić had threatened her six days before she was dismissed and fired.
Her lawyer Ivan Ninić filed a criminal complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office for Organised Crime against the head of the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade, Nenad Stefanović, and the acting prosecutor Aleksandar Milošević, accusing them of unlawful conduct towards his client. In the complaint, submitted on 2 March, Ninić accuses Stefanović and Milošević of committing, as co-perpetrators between mid-January and 17 February this year, the criminal offence of violation of the law by a judge, public prosecutor and deputy prosecutor, in conjunction with the criminal offence of abuse of official position.
Ninić states that the two men, contrary to the law and the ethical code of prosecutors, used their authority and acted against Danijela Maletić, for whom the only competent authority should be the Prosecutor’s Office for Organised Crime, in accordance with the provisions of the Law on the Organisation and Jurisdiction of State Authorities in the Suppression of Organised Crime, Terrorism and Corruption. He claims that on 12 February they unlawfully ordered the Anti-Corruption Department of the Criminal Police Directorate in Belgrade to arrest her, even though they knew or should have known they lacked jurisdiction. On that day, members of the Criminal Police Directorate, headed by Marko Kričak, detained Maletić and another bank employee in handcuffs.
In the complaint, Ninić notes that prosecutor Milošević stated in the interrogation record: “After the hearing I have decided that the suspect should be immediately released because there are no legal grounds to submit a proposal for detention to the judge for preliminary proceedings, given that I am not the competent public prosecutor in this case and that I will immediately forward it to the competent Prosecutor’s Office for Organised Crime.” Although Maletić was released at 11:05 a.m., later that day after 1 p.m. the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office issued an official statement falsely claiming that “the suspects were ordered to be detained for up to 48 hours on the prosecutor’s order, within which period they would be brought in for questioning,” a claim that was reported by almost all media outlets.
In his complaint to the Prosecutor’s Office for Organised Crime, Ninić also states that on 20 February he was called by telephone by a prosecutorial assistant, without real grounds for urgent action, to attend the questioning of two witnesses the following day, and that the offence attributed to Maletić and the bank employee had been reclassified from abuse of official position to disclosure of a business secret. He points out that from 21 to 27 February, he was not informed about the evidentiary actions undertaken, whether an expert examination of Danijela Maletić’s mobile phone had been conducted, or whether all the summoned and planned witnesses had been questioned. For that reason, on 27 February, he submitted a request to the registry of the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade for the recusal of that office and the Appellate Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade.
In addition to the criminal complaint filed with the Prosecutor’s Office for Organised Crime and the request for the recusal of the Higher and Appellate Prosecutor’s Offices in Belgrade, lawyer Ninić also submitted a request to the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office to establish supervision and determine irregularities in the work of the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office, complaints to the High Prosecutorial Council regarding its conduct, and a request to the First Basic Court in Belgrade to initiate civil proceedings against the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office. In all these submissions, he described what had happened in the meantime and argued that prosecutors Stefanović and Milošević had violated the presumption of innocence of the detained women through the official statement issued by the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office.
In the request for recusal, he clarified that the Appellate Prosecutor’s Office is responsible for supervising the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office but that it “has taken no measures regarding the public presentation of false information, violations of the presumption of innocence and manipulation of the jurisdiction of the Prosecutor’s Office for Organised Crime”.
(Radar, 05.03.2026)
https://radar.nova.rs/drustvo/jtok-vista-rica-sns/