"My mother died when I was in prison. She was over 90, but it wasn't illness that killed her. She died of sadness. My father died shortly after her."
Miroslav MiškoviÄ? does not show any emotion as he tells his story - not a flicker of an eye. And it's only after an hour and a half of exclusive conversation with Nova's special correspondent that he agrees to talk about his family. Serbia's richest man is also an iron man, and that's exactly the impression he wants to give. But his direct gaze, the challenging tone in his voice, cannot conceal his bitterness over the wrong he feels has been done to him, the offense he has suffered.
On Dec. 12, 2012, he was arrested on the orders of Belgrade's special court for organized crime, which accused him of distorting the market through financial operations that increased the value of a number of companies operating in the road maintenance sector. MiškoviÄ? did not control these companies, he did not hold any positions on their boards, and the criminal nature of the operations was open to question. But he was kept in prison for more than 7 months, and the case caused a sensation. Not just because MiškoviÄ? is Chairman of Delta Holding, Serbia's most important private company. Not just because he was the first person, in 2008, to represent the Balkans on the Forbes list of the richest people on the planet. Not just because he's a glamorous personality who surrounds himself with beautiful women whom he appoints to positions of great responsibility. But also because of the political implications of the case.
Right after his arrest, the Serbian Prime Minister, Aleksandar Vucic, declared that "there are many politicians on MiškoviÄ?'s side", and explained that the "system" the magnate had put in place included "monthly payments to many people, of sums ranging from 30,000 to 50,000 euros, paid from MiškoviÄ?'s own pocket". In the indictment, however, the word "corruption" does not appear once, and nearly two and a half years on from the arrest, no one has named any names: of corrupted or of corrupters. "In 25 years we have never done business with the state or with state-controlled companies", states MiškoviÄ?. "If you don't do business with the state, there can't be corruption. I still don't know what I'm accused of".
In truth, the businessman built a large part of his fortune by taking an active part in the process of privatizing state-owned companies. He tells the story himself, during lunch on the top floor of the high-rise building that hosts his group's headquarters, in the New Belgrade that he played a large part in creating. The grey autumn day seems to weigh down on the apple tree planted on the terrace. A tree laden with fruit that MiškoviÄ? shows me with a peculiar pride, as though it were one of his enterprises. As we'll discover later on, that is exactly what it was.
The President of Delta Holding was born in a village in the district of Rasina, in central Serbia, on July 5, 1945, just two months after the surrender of Nazi Germany. His father, Djordje, was a shoemaker; his mother, Vera Djukic, a housewife. Serbia was just emerging from a war that had laid the country waste and killed a million people. The socialist regime led by Josip Broz Tito certainly did not focus on wealth. Indeed, of all the socialist regimes, it is the one that more than any other rewarded merit. Miroslav was no ordinary boy. He studied hard, took part in sports, as a sprinter, and obtained an economics degree from the University of Kragujevac, where he met and married his wife Ljiljana. He then moved back to Kruševac, Rasina's administrative centre, to work in the Jugobank, Yugoslavia's most important bank.
The young Miroslav was intensely ambitious. He wanted to come first. After just a few years the bank sent him on a specialization course in Dubrovnik, the ancient Ragusa - a town of rare beauty on the shore of the Adriatic, from where you can almost see Italy. "My teachers were engaged in finance operations day in, day out", he says. "If the University played a 1% part in my development, the school in Dubrovnik accounted for another 30%. And the rest, I learned by working".
