Trepca Jug Seizes Shops and Parking in Zvecan
A company run by Pristina's interim institutions seized shops and parking space in central Zvecan on August 29, following the same pattern used earlier at Gazivode.
Trepca Jug, a company run by Pristina’s interim institutions, seized several business premises and a parking area of more than 1,500 square meters in central Zvecan on August 29. The people using those spaces had earlier been notified to vacate them, and the company says the takeover followed only after the deadline it had set expired.
Among the seized premises is a shop on King Milutin Street covering more than 100 square meters. The parking space in central Zvecan includes both an open section and a covered one. On its Facebook page, the company said it was taking back management of its own property in Zvecan after 27 years, claiming the process was carried out in line with the relevant procedures.
The action began on August 12, when Trepca Jug posted notices on at least three premises in central Zvecan, giving users ten days to leave. Notices were also put up at the entrance of a residential building that had previously housed a branch of the Serbian postal service, as well as on the premises of a pharmacy.
A new notice, dated August 28, was posted on a garage building on the same street, with another ten-day deadline. The notice cites data from the property registers for parcels P-73008051-00238-1 and P-73008051-00238-8 in the cadastral municipality of Zvecan, and states that the users have no usage agreement with the company. “Please vacate the property within ten days of receiving this notice,” the document reads, warning of legal action and a damages claim if the space is not vacated. Users were given the same deadline to submit documentation proving otherwise.
According to the news outlet KoSSev, some of the people who received earlier notices have already left their premises, even though the previous deadlines had since expired. Radio Kosovska Mitrovica reports that the document, whose letterhead reads “Trepca a.d.”, is signed under the shortened name “Trepca,” while the company itself is most often referred to in statements and media reports as “Trepca Jug.”
The pattern the company applied in Zvecan mirrors a process seen earlier this year around Gazivode Lake, where at least 17 structures owned by Serbs were demolished after the company Ibar Lepenac claimed they stood on its land. The demolitions went ahead without court rulings, and in some cases hearings had already been scheduled at which the owners were contesting those claims. Both in Zvecan and at Gazivode, the companies involved are run by Pristina’s interim institutions, which settle property status through their own notices, without any prior court proceeding in which users could dispute ownership.
Along with the notice posted on the garage building, the company attached a photograph of the structures covered by the request, so users could identify exactly which space they were required to leave. The same pattern, a ten-day notice citing cadastral data and warning of a damages lawsuit, was applied both to the shop on King Milutin Street and to the parking area the company seized on August 29, before it moved on to the garage.
According to KoSSev, the garage building on King Milutin Street may be just one of several new claims Trepca Jug continues to file in central Zvecan. The deadline set in the latest notice expires on September 7, and it remains to be determined by that date whether another seizure will follow the same pattern already used to take the shop, the residential space and the parking area. In a span of just over two weeks, Zvecan has become the second site in northern Kosovo, after the area around Gazivode Lake, where a company run by Pristina’s interim institutions has seized property without any prior court proceeding.
