Miladinovic's Slovenian Firm Draws Anti-Corruption Probe

Serbia’s Anti-Corruption Agency confirmed on September 23 that it is checking whether there are grounds to open proceedings against Dusan Miladinovic, director of Novi Sad’s public utility JP Urbanizam, over his stake in a company registered in Slovenia. The company is Archi Lend, based in the town of Lendava, where Miladinovic holds half the ownership, according to Slovenia’s business registry.

The link between the Novi Sad public utility’s director and the Slovenian firm was first flagged by Misa Baculov, a member of the Novi Sad City Assembly. Asked to confirm the claim, the Agency did not hedge.

“The Anti-Corruption Agency is currently checking whether the conditions are met to open proceedings over a possible breach of the Anti-Corruption Law by Dusan Miladinovic, director of JP Urbanizam, in connection with the suspicion that, while holding that public office, he registered the company Archi Lend d.o.o. in the Republic of Slovenia,” the Agency said in its response.

Miladinovic has headed Urbanizam since 2014, first as acting director, then as the elected director in 2015, 2019 and 2023. His monthly salary in that role is 184,450 dinars. His asset disclosure filed with the Agency does not list an ownership stake in Archi Lend.

The company was founded in 2022, eight years after Miladinovic took over Urbanizam, with founding capital of 7,500 euros. The remaining 50 percent is owned by Aleksa Miladinovic, while Zlatko Stepanovic is registered as the company’s director; Stepanovic is also linked to Aleksa Miladinovic through a separate Novi Sad company that is in forced liquidation. Archi Lend designs, installs and supervises mechanical systems for medical and technical gases, and lists among its references work at the Faculty of Medicine in Ljubljana, the Sestre Milosrdnice Clinical Hospital Center in Zagreb, the Croatian Institute of Public Health, and a hospital in Sisak. According to Slovenia’s Agency for Public Legal Records and Related Services, the company posted revenue of 346,000 euros in 2025.

Article 48 of the Anti-Corruption Law bars a full-time public official from founding a company or exercising management rights in one during their term. Whether that article was breached hinges on when the company was founded relative to when Miladinovic took office.

Zlatko Minic of the watchdog group Transparency Serbia explains that the law splits the question into two separate situations.

“The point is that the law bars an official from founding a company while in office. On the other hand, it also states that an official cannot exercise management rights, which would mean that if the company already existed when the official took office, he has to hand over the management rights, though he can remain the owner and can even collect the corresponding return on his ownership stake,” Minic says.

According to him, what matters is simply whether the company was founded before or after 2014.

“If he founded it before 2014, before he became a public official, his obligation was to hand over the management rights. If he founded it after 2014, once he had become a public official, he breached that article of the law,” Minic concludes.

Since Archi Lend was registered in 2022, eight years after Miladinovic became Urbanizam’s director, this case would, by Minic’s reading, fall into the second category. Citing Article 81 of the same law, the Agency declined to comment on the outcome, saying only that information on whether proceedings were opened against an official, and how they were resolved, is publicly available.

Miladinovic did not respond to any of the questions the 021 newsroom sent him about the Lendava company, including why the ownership stake was never disclosed to the Agency and how personally involved he is in Archi Lend’s business. While the review is pending, it remains an open question whether the Agency will move to open formal proceedings against the Novi Sad public utility’s director in the coming months.