Zoran Jankovic's Son Got Serbian Passport at Petrovic's

Jure Jankovic, son of Ljubljana Mayor Zoran Jankovic, was granted Serbian citizenship by a special government decision that invokes the existence of a “national interest” for the state. The decision was signed on October 31, 2024, by Milos Vucevic, prime minister of Serbia at the time, according to a joint investigation by the KRIK investigative portal and the Slovenian outlet Ostro, published on September 15, 2026. The younger Jankovic’s official residence in Serbia is a villa in Dedinje owned by Nikola Petrovic, former director of the state power grid operator Elektromreza Srbije and a close friend of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.

According to KRIK, Jankovic received citizenship through a special procedure that bypasses the usual rules. The government cited a provision of the law under which such a move can be justified by the existence of a national interest, but did not specify to the newsroom which article of the law was invoked. The government did not respond to questions about who proposed the decision, on whose initiative it was made, or what exactly that interest consists of.

The Address in Dedinje

Jure Jankovic’s registered residence in Serbia is, according to official land registry records reviewed by KRIK journalists, the very villa in Dedinje owned by Nikola Petrovic. Petrovic’s close ties to Zoran Jankovic were previously uncovered by the N1 Slovenia portal. According to information the Ljubljana mayor’s office provided to that newsroom, Jankovic and Petrovic met at least four times between late 2022 and April 2025, including one dinner together with Vucic in Belgrade in April 2025.

Petrovic did not substantively answer questions about when and why he registered Jure Jankovic at his address, nor about the nature of his relationship with Zoran Jankovic. Instead, he sent journalists a sharply worded message.

“You are rude and impolite to the utmost degree, if you even have the idea that I would answer your interrogation style questions so you can write a vile article, like the hundreds you have already written. I kindly ask you to write down in your newsroom, in capital letters: do not contact Nikola Petrovic. For anything you think he did outside the law, there are competent institutions for that. Have a nice day, and I wish you all the worst!”

With those words, the Serbian president’s close friend ended the correspondence with KRIK and Ostro, without addressing the specific question about the address. Neither Zoran nor Jure Jankovic, to whom Ostro’s journalists also sent questions, responded.

The Government’s Silence as the Problem

The absence of an explanation is, according to sources cited by KRIK, what makes this case problematic. Vuk Vuckovic, executive director of the organization Klikaktiv, points out that fast tracked citizenship is not in itself an unusual practice, but that the reason must be made public.

“Similar procedures exist in other countries too, and it is a mechanism used for the benefit of the state. However, it needs to be clearly known what this is about, meaning it must be explained what the state’s benefit is in that person receiving it. Especially in the context of the fact that many people who live in Serbia cannot get personal documents, or wait for years to receive citizenship and thereby exercise the rights that belong to them.”

Vuckovic’s comment points to a question that, even after the report’s publication, remains unanswered by the authorities: why the mayor of Ljubljana’s son in particular was recognized as a case of national significance for Serbia, while regular procedures for other applicants, in his words, are slower and stricter.

A Business Deal in Ljubljana’s Trnovo Neighborhood

The closeness between Petrovic and Jankovic also had a business dimension in Slovenia, according to Ostro. Through his company NG Projekt, Petrovic bought about one hectare of building land in the Trnovo neighborhood, an area of the city known as “Ljubljana’s Siberia,” from the City of Ljubljana in 2024. The company was registered two weeks before the city opened a public tender for that plot, and it was the only bidder. The price of 3.3 million euros was about a million euros lower than what the city had sought for the same land in earlier, failed tenders. NG Projekt took out 4.9 million euros in bank loans for the deal, and when Ostro’s journalists visited the plot in late August, they found it still overgrown with forest, with no substantial construction underway.

Slovenian police examined whether the sale involved any criminal offense after the details were published, but closed the investigation in April 2025, finding nothing improper.

Closeness With Vucic

Zoran Jankovic, who was born in Serbia and lived there until the age of 12, has in recent years openly cultivated a friendly relationship with Aleksandar Vucic, praised the “Belgrade Waterfront” project, and publicly backed the Serbian president during last year’s student protests. In January of last year, he sent Vucic a letter of support.

“Your leadership, determination and vision are key to the progress Serbia has made in recent years, and I am convinced that this path must be continued.”

In return, Vucic gave him an informal, unpaid role in preparations for Expo 2027 in 2024, which he wrote about himself on his Instagram account.

“The topic was Expo 2027. I asked Zoran for help and support, and I thank him for embracing it wholeheartedly.”

Property and a Written Off Debt in Serbia

Beyond citizenship and his registered address at Petrovic’s villa, Jure Jankovic is also tied to Serbia through property. In the village of Saraorci near Smederevo, where his father Zoran is from, the younger Jankovic owns land and a house built without a permit, according to land registry records. KRIK adds that tax authorities wrote off his personal debt of nearly half a million euros in the summer of 2024, without disclosing how much of that debt had previously been repaid.

Jure Jankovic, together with his older brother Damijan, inherited the family group Electa in 2004, when their father entered politics. The company later ran up debts of tens of millions of euros to banks, the state and business partners, and part of that debt was written off through a simplified forced settlement procedure, using a legal loophole that Slovenia closed in 2023.

The case of Jure Jankovic, according to KRIK, is not an isolated one. Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Serbian government has used the same fast track procedure and the same national interest justification to grant citizenship to a number of Russian nationals linked to power in Moscow, for whom a Serbian passport made it easier to circumvent European Union sanctions. Whether the government will explain, in this case, on what basis the mayor’s son was recognized as being in the state’s interest remains an open question, one the authorities have so far answered neither to journalists nor to the public.