WE DISCOVER The state of Slovenia has sued the largest exporter of weapons from Serbia, demanding to pay them 7.2 million dollars

The State of Slovenia, before the court in Belgrade, sued the Serbian state company “Jugoimport SDPR”, which is one of the largest arms exporters from Serbia. According to the information we obtained, the Slovenians requested about 7.2 million dollars from the SDPR, and “debt” is cited as the basis of the dispute.

For several years, out of the public eye, there has been a dispute between the Republic of Slovenia and “Jugoimport SDPR”, a state-owned company that is one of the arms exporters from Serbia. According to the official registers, the lawsuit was filed because of the debt, and the Slovenians are asking for 749,452,754 dinars to be paid.

On the website of the Ministry of Justice, where, along with the number of cases, you can find information about the court proceedings itself, it is written that the amount of the dispute is 7,211,393 dollars, and that the appeal procedure is ongoing.

The lawsuit was filed on May 28, 2021.

We tried to find out how the SDPR came to be sued by the state of Slovenia at several addresses.

Nova.rs contacted the lawyer of the plaintiff, i.e. the Republic of Slovenia, Marija Smiljanić Pilčević, but she refused to talk on the subject. We went through a similar situation when we called the lawyer Oliver Živković, who represents the SDPR, who also told us that he could not speak on that topic.

“Jugoimport SDPR” was founded in 1949, and over time the production capacities exceeded the domestic market. Today, it employs more than 350 people, and last year the company made a profit of around 5.1 million euros. This is about two million euros more earnings compared to what was achieved in 2022.

And according to official data obtained by “Nova”, Jugoimport SDPR is the company that received the most permits for the export of weapons in the past few years. It is similar with the values ​​of the contracted jobs, where it is side by side with “Prvi Partizan”.
In 2023, SDPR contracted deals worth $263,767,970, and from 2020 to the end of last year, they concluded deals worth more than half a billion dollars.

Strictly confidential export to Israel

Exports to Israel especially increased at the beginning of this year. New Economy announced that exports to the country, which is fighting against Hamas, jumped dramatically in March of this year. As reported, his value that month alone was around 14.09 million euros.

This is a significant increase in Jugoimport’s exports to Israel compared to the previous two in October and February, which BIRN wrote about. That research portal announced that these shipments together were worth “more than a million euros”, and that they were realized after the surprise attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023.

BIRN journalists, when they asked the Ministry of Internal and Foreign Trade about the value of the contract, received the answer that data on the export of arms to Israel is kept under the label “strictly confidential”.