Five thousand acres of land (1200 irrigated acres) under orchards, agriculture, crop farming, hundreds of livestock and harvesteres belonging to the company “Agroruma” represented a tempting pray for a new businessman Mr. Veljko Mandic, leading participant in the “privatization” of this company. Mr. Mandic would not have been so lucky as to take hold of such treasure if he did not receive help from the local Municipal and Court officials in Ruma and Sremska Mitrovica. The story goes back to wartime , when “Agroruma” supplied the acclaimed corpus from Novi Sad,and thanks to the swift action of the local forces the company goes down the hill and falls into bankruptcy in 2003, even though it had a chance to recover.

According to the qoutes from the petition of small shareholders of “Agroruma”, the first trustee in bankrutcy Mr. Sinisa Todorovic worked hard. After him, the judge in bankruptcy, Ms Slavica Levajac appoints a new trustee Mr. Ivan Petakovic, who concludes a contract on joint investment, ment to save “Agroruma”, with Mr. Mandic’s “Agromerkantilija”.

It is easy to imagine how this rescuing looked like according to Mr. Mandic’s move with fish-pond, where he caught all the fishes, sold the capital fund from the plantation of “Agroruma” excluding the bidding, and without making payments to “Agroruma” et cetera.

Mr. Petakovic, trustee in bankruptcy, transfers 1,5 million dinars to “Drvni Kombinat”, where he acts as trustee in bankruptcy as well, and to the company belonging to his son “Spectra”.The chief creditor and “rescuer”, Mr. Mandic will have to prove if he actualy made any investments in “Agroruma”, because the leading participants are finally under investigation, and Municipal Prosecution has notified Minstry of Justice. At the bankruptcy settlement, Mr. Mandic became the owner of 56% of the company.

The participants managing the bankrupcy were in a hurry to end this “privatization”as soon as posible. There was no reason to be so hasty because, prior to the bankruptcy, Agency for Privatization called the Municipal authorities to privatize major companies, “Agroruma” being one of them. The Municipality has been hiding this from the company, because the plot regarding bankruptcy has already been planed.

The workers addressed the Commerce Court in Sremska Mitrovica, but since they got no answers, they pressed charges against President Ms Dusanka Petakovic. According to the small shareholders, Mr. Mandic has recently increased his property for 79% by conversion of disputable claims.

Whoever wants to find out how to become a landowner, should act as state institutions did in the case of “Agroruma. Institutions do not care about the weed on the fields, sale of property, 650 dismisssed workers, nor how did one man find the way to win the only important thing for him – a territory. The logical question would, therefore, be – if the war is still going on, only with different instruments?

Ms Verica Barac,
President of the Council