Police Sting Nets Two Corporate Bosses
The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said two unnamed persons were detained while several house searches were ongoing in Ljubljana and Celje on suspicion of abuse of office and the embezzling of EUR 5.5m.
The online edition of business daily Finance reports that police arrested Zdenko Pavcek, the boss of troubled haulage company Viator & Vektor, and Aleksander Svetelsek, the former boss of retailer Engrotus and energy group Petrol.
Viator & Vektor is said to have aided the managers of Merkur in their buyout by taking out a bank loan to finance Merfin, the vehicle Merkur managers used for the buyout. Svetelsek was a shareholder of Merfin.
Merfin itself is the subject of a separate investigation regarding the spectacularly failed buyout that brought Merkur to the verge of bankruptcy and ultimately into the hands of creditor banks.