Trepca Gives Zvecan Shops Ten Days to Vacate
Eviction notices appeared on shops in King Milutin Street in Zvecan and on two buildings in North Mitrovica. The deadline is ten days, and residents fear apartments could be next.
Notices bearing Trepca’s letterhead appeared in the afternoon hours of August 13 on the display windows of three shops in two residential buildings on King Milutin Street, in the very center of Zvecan. The document is dated August 12, 2026, titled “Request for Vacating Property,” and gives users a ten day deadline. It is written exclusively in Albanian.
The request states that Trepca, based on data from a property certificate, determined that the real estate belongs to the company, while users occupy it without a contract with the enterprise. If the space is not vacated within the given deadline, the company announces it will turn to the competent authorities to have the property returned to its possession. Identical notices were posted in North Mitrovica as well, on the building of the former post office and on the former bank in the city center.
In Zvecan, the request covers the space of a former branch of Komercijalna banka, premises where Serbia’s postal service, Posta Srbije, used to operate, and a pharmacy that still serves customers today. These are addresses residents pass every day, not remote buildings.
Why Zvecan fears apartments could be next
Some of the parcels Trepca is demanding be vacated also contain residential buildings. The first tenants have already started checking what documentation they hold and on what basis they occupy their apartments, since not everyone has the purchase decisions on file.
Attorney Dragutin Nenezic, part of the legal team helping the owners of buildings demolished at Gazivode, does not view Trepca’s move in isolation:
“What is happening right now, and again we know about it only from a handful of news reports and the information that has come out, is in my view just one part, and in a way a continuation, of a broader action that currently includes the situation with Lake Gazivode, and could potentially include the university as well, and could include residential buildings built with funds from the Republic of Serbia.”
The chronology has followed a clear order. First came the buildings at Gazivode, then demolitions and arrests in neighboring Zubin Potok, and now the requests in Zvecan and North Mitrovica.
What the official records show
Kosovo’s Cadastral Agency, in the first phase of registration during 2025, transferred 2,133 properties to Trepca, covering roughly 12.6 square kilometers of land.
Kosovo’s own official audit for 2024 shows at the same time that the records for that very same property are far from in order:
- 236 requests from employees to purchase apartments were identified, yet those apartments are not listed in the property register nor shown in the annual financial statements
- the Kopaonik mining plant in Leposavic was registered under two separate business identification numbers, with separate bank accounts
- part of the parcels listed in the cadastre as belonging to that unit was never entered in Trepca’s own register
The request to vacate the property, then, rests on a property certificate, while the auditor’s findings on that same asset base record hundreds of unreconciled entries.
What the Zvecan municipality says
Zvecan Mayor Dragisa Milovic met a day after the notices were posted with the shop owners and with representatives of Trepca North, who, as he said, told him they had not been informed about the action. Milovic has invited the director of Trepca South to talks.
“We see what is happening in the neighboring municipality of Zubin Potok. Shops and houses are being demolished without court rulings, people are being arrested, and we fear that such an action, carried out without legal grounds, might gain momentum and reach the municipality of Zvecan too. We will not allow that. We want to sit down and clarify the situation from a legal standpoint,” Milovic said.
As an example, he cited one of the affected users, Vojin Radivojevic, who bought his shop from Trepca back in 1976 and who now has a notice on that same shop ordering him to leave. The municipality has offered legal assistance to everyone who receives such a request.
The ten day deadline from the date on the document expires on August 22. Until then, it remains unknown exactly how many buildings are covered, on what records Trepca bases its claim to them, and whether the same kind of request will reach the doors of apartments in Zvecan as well.
