After a long winter hibernation, we are delighted to welcome back TCN columnist Tanja Radmilo with her From Croatia with Madness column, which will be a weekly feature moving forward. Tanja starts with a closer look at the treatment of Agrokor.
We agrosuck because:
1. Until a couple of weeks ago, the only thing that we could have heard or read about Konzum, Ledo, Tisak, or any other Agrokor Group member for that matter, were paid advertisements or information that you can buy pork sausages at a special price of 29.99 kuna. Currently, the first eight pages of each daily are devoted to lamentation and deep truths about the Agrokor crisis.
2. Nobody cared when hundreds of families lost their homes, sometimes for non-existing debts, or like this woman whose apartment was sold by the Court in Koprivnica because of the debt amounting to 200 euro.
3. It was OK to close businesses because of 24 not accounted for kuna in the cash register, yet no inspector has ever found any irregularity in any of about 1800 retail outlets of Konzum and Tisak and there must have been thousands and thousands of extra kunas on a daily basis due to the pricing policy of 99 lipas. Where is the money or Di su pare?
4. In October 2016, Cinestar refused to show documentary Gazda – Ovo nije film o Ivici Todoriću (The Boss – This is not a Film About ivica Todorić) made by Dario Juričan and Saša Paparella. The reason for not showing the film was that in Cinestar „they believed that people would not be interested in watching that kind of film.“ All the tickets for the first night in Split were sold in 20 minutes and it was the same in all other Croatian cities thanks to small independent cinemas. It is estimated that until the end of 2016, the film was seen by more than 10,000 citizens. The film is now available online.
5. Minister of Finance is Zdravko Marić, former Agrokor employee, I mean, how bad is this?
6. Although the Republic of Croatia has still not ratified the Istanbul Convention which was signed in 2013 and which could help in the prevention of and fight against violence against women, and although the Sports Act is not being implemented because the football mafia says so, the Systematically Relevant Companies Act, that was drafted and passed only for Todorić and is called „Lex Todorić“, was adopted literally overnight without public debate. Nobody knows who drafted the Act and nobody knows how the Act is to be implemented. Even the Minister of Economy, Martina Dalić, had problems trying to explain things to the citizens when she could not have stopped laughing probably thinking: „I know my people are suckers, but this is too much, oh my God, it’s hilarious if they buy it!“
7. Ivica Todorić was a very thirsty man. He owns Agrokor that owned Jamnica that produces Jana, Croatian number one bottled mineral water. The water was bottled from St. Jana water spring pursuant to Concession Agreement, but it was evident that Agrokor was in violation and abuse of the Agreement. Concretely, it had a concession to a considerably smaller volume of water than extracted and nobody cared.
8. According to Fulfilment of Monetary Obligations Act, the payments have to be executed in 60 days max, except for the Boss. It turns out that Agrokor’s suppliers of goods and services have not been paid for more than 200 days on average.
9. Ivica piled a lot of crap and was swimming very well atop of it, of course, with a little help from the political figures, Physical Plans and laws were changed because of this man, he was untouchable, when shit got deeper and he started having troubles keeping his head above the water, he decided that he don’t wanna play capitalism any more and gave the shitty nappy to Mother Croatia: “You take care of this, little Ivica is tired. I just wanna sit in my castle and play with my helicopter.” And Mamma obeyed. The important thing is that Ivica delivered only his problems to Croatia to deal with, but he did not assign ownership shares.
9.99 We should have changed the name Croatia to Agrokoratia a long time ago.
