Reuters/Belgrade
Billionaire retail tycoon Miroslav Miskovic, one of Serbia’s most influential figures, was arrested with his son and eight other people yesterday as part of an anti-graft probe, the top organised crime prosecutor said.
“According to charges .... as co-owners of privatised road maintenance companies between 2005 and the end of 2010, they siphoned off funds and property and made financial gains of as much as 2.9bn dinars ($33.4mn),” Miljko Radisavljevic, Serbia’s Chief Prosecutor for Organised Crime, said.
Estimated to be Serbia’s richest man, Miskovic, 67, has interests in retail, agribusiness, real estate and insurance in Serbia and the Balkans.
He created his Delta Holding empire under late strongman Slobodan Milosevic during Yugoslavia’s bloody collapse in the 1990s and expanded it after he was ousted in 2000. Miskovic was worth a billion dollars in 2007, according to the finance magazine Forbes, and was among the richest 1,000 in the world.
In 2011 he sold his Delta Maxi supermarket chain to Delhaize, a Belgium-based retailer, for €932.5mn euro ($1.21bn), one of the largest foreign investments ever in the EU applicant country.