Only a week before Marinika Tepić lambasted Telekom's CEO Vladimir Lučić, alleging that Telekom was about to go bankrupt, the European Investment Bank (EIB) demonstrated its solid trust in the operation of Serbia's Telekom by approving a 70 million-euro loan to improve its mobile network.
By so doing, as the EU's principal bank in charge of funding development projects, the EIB practically gave the lie to Marinika Tepić's claims made at a press conference to the effect that Telekom was in such a bad shape business-wise that no bank wanted to work with it anymore.
Šolak lobbied to prevent the approval of the Telekom loan
As Kurir has been reliably informed by a source at the EIB with knowledge of the situation, as the decision on approving the Telekom loan was about to be made, the bank was under a great deal of pressure from lobbyists hired by United Group to ensure that the investment did not get the go-ahead . In spite of this, the bank's management saw Telekom's great development potential and bright prospects, and decided to get involved in this major project, which will help introduce the 5G telecommunications network and expand the existing 4G network, making them available to almost the entire population of Serbia.
The agreement on the EIB's loan to Serbia's Telekom was signed on 15 December this year by Telekom's CEO Vladimir Lučić and Ljiljana Pavlova, Vice-President of the EIB in charge of business operations in Serbia.
It is a well-known fact that the approval process for such significant bank loan amounts requires complex verification and risk assessment procedures conducted by the EIB's best teams of experts. This suggests that their assessment of Telekom's overall operation was positive. Whether or not Marinika Tepić has gone so far in her obsession with destroying Telekom as to believe that she is more qualified and better versed in market trends than the EIB experts is a question that she will probably never answer herself. We never got an answer to the question whether her attacks against Telekom are an example of a conflict of interest either, given that she is employed at Multikom – a company that has business ties with Šolak's United Group.
Not even the great Vodafone believed Multikom's employee
Adding to the EIB's recognition of Telekom's vision of development, another, possibly greater proof of the fact that Serbia's telecommunications operator is on the right track has been proffered by the world-renowned telecommunications giant, Vodafone. This company, known across the globe, signed in November an agreement on the strategic partnership with Telekom which includes Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. This agreement clearly indicates that, despite all foul play and attacks by the competitors, Serbia's state operator is a world-class regional player in its line of business.
Double standards of the media in Šolak's mechanism
In Šolak's mechanism, parameters such as debt amount, partner trust, or small company acquisition are given different interpretations for United Group and Telekom. This speaks to the fact that double standards are employed as needed there, and that the clash with Šolak's competitors lacks all principle.
For example, the fact that United Group has a substantially higher debt than Telekom is completely ignored when Telekom's debt is brought up. As a result, Šolak's companies' loans are framed as investment and development-related, whereas the self-same types of Telekom's loans as profligate and corruptive.
Perhaps an even better illustration of the double standards in question is the fact that the EBRD's mere 2-percent ownership share in United Group is regularly framed by the company's management and the media it owns as the ultimate proof of the trust in the Group's operation and market prospects. However, when the EIB approves a loan of no less than 70 million euros for Telekom – in itself a sign of the greatest possible trust in the Serbian telecommunications operator's business – Dragan Šolak's political mouthpieces are not fazed and still claim, without a shred of evidence, that Telekom's business operations are unreliable, unsustainable, and irrational.
Another telling example reveals the sheer hypocrisy of some of the parts of Šolak's mechanism: the media controlled by United Group launched an attack against Telekom over the acquisition of smaller cable operators although United Group itself boasts in its official reports of having completed the acquisitions of more than 100 smaller companies. In other words, what is termed success in Šolak's case is framed as irregular, unprofitable in the market and plain wrong in the case of Telekom.
All of the above clearly suggests that what is at play here is hypocrisy and attacks motivated by politics and business, and not Multikom employee Marinika Tepić's apparent efforts of to save Serbia's Telekom.
How Lučić was alright during Tadić and Đilas and became a bad apple during Vučić
The fact that Telekom CEO Vladimir Lučić, a highly respected engineer at Telekom, was appointed as M:tel CEO during Boris Tadić's presidency speaks to the hypocrisy of Marinika Tepić's accusations that he has destroyed M:tel – today the foremost cable television and mobile telephony operator in Montenegro. Back then, however, Đilas did not attack him as his Direct Media had lucrative deals with Telekom Serbia.
Today, when Telekom no longer spends its money irrationally to grease the palms of party marketing agencies, Đilas and his minions launch attacks against people who have proven their ability and know-how in the market. At the same time, Telekom's business results and market value are substantially higher than when Boris Tadić and Dragan Đilas's regime ran this company.
Kurir Editorial Staff