Agrokor’s shareholders have a thing or two to say about the contents of Ivica Todorić’s blogs, and they aren’t good…
Agrokor’s former boss, Ivica Todorić, has been writing usually accusatory blog posts for several months.
Now living in London and awaiting April to find out whether or not the competent British authorities will have him extradited to Croatia, the former majority owner of the largest privately owned company in Croatia has a lot of time on his hands to dedicate to his blog. Not everyone is finding it that entertaining, Agrokor’s shareholders in particular…
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 7th of January, 2018, the members of Agrokor’s Shareholders’ Association have strongly condemned the text on Ivica Todorić’s blog under the title “Lex Agrokor allowed the plundering of small shareholders”.
“We believe that Prime Minister Plenković made a state-level move by passing the Law (Lex Agrokor) in time, preventing the collapse of the Croatian economy. We also believe that small shareholders are the victims of the guarantees issued in the exact time when Ivica Todorić was either in the management or in the supervisory boards of Agrokor or of its subsidiaries (dependent companies),” read a statement from the association, which was signed by the deputy chairman, Miroslav Jeličić-Purko.
They also point out that Ivica Todorić didn’t accept the ideas and suggestions of the small shareholders, such as dividend payment or dividing Jamnica’s shares, and judged this to be very indicative that guarantees were given in other countries and made at company assemblies.
Here is Ivica Todorić’s latest blog post, written on the 7th of January, 2018, translated into English:
”After I presented the fact that Prime Minister Plenkovic caused damage to domestic and foreign investors in Croatia with his statesmanly moves, and what the results of his first year in power are yesterday, today I’ll clearly present how a man who, according to Plenković’s decree, had to rescue [the economy] from me, is directly involved in the collapse of the Croatian economy.
Regardless of the fact that I’ve built that same economy for decades, created and strengthened the preconditions for a fair match with the strongest competition from more developed European and world economies, and that I created companies that could be listed on world stock exchanges, Ramljak ”rescued” them from us who built them and gave them wings. Ramljak also ”rescued” the Zagreb Stock Exchange and Crobex, he ”rescued” institutional and small investors, he ”rescued” pensions and pension funds. He ”rescued” them in a way that would have resulted in a sentence to a lengthy punishment in every democratic country. And he made his own ideas about ”rescuing” public, in front of the cameras.
Namely, the presentation held by Extraordinary Commissioner Ante Ramljak on December the 20th is not only scandalous, illegal and criminal, but it is in itself a proof of the crime because it was made public. The words of the man who wrote Lex Agrokor, and is implementing it today, confirm that everything that the government and all of Agrokor’s shareholders have received through Lex [Agrokor] – the exclusive preferential treatment of personal interests through increasingly apparent criminal acts. And Ramljak, who should be protecting Agrokor’s values, is publicly destroying them.
“Unfortunately, investing in stocks and trading on the stock market is a very risky business. According to this structure of the settlement, Ledo’s shareholders and all other Agrokor companies will lose their shares completely”, stated Agrokor’s Ante Ramljak. And during his appearance on RTL Direct In October, Ramljak made another “savage” statement – “We’ll have to write off 70 percent of the debt, and the settlement will succeed 100 percent.” The result of his statement is that Agrokor’s shares fell to record low levels and were practically devalued, and that opened up space for speculators who, in the short term, made five times more on the account of the small shareholders.
For a much lighter offense than this, and not for such an unseen public appearance like that of Ramljak, the epilogue can only be a court judgment.”
Todorić concludes the bold blog post by using several examples of arrests made in other countries of those who he considers to be acting in the same manner Ramljak is.
