by Boris RASETA
Lezaic, who besides the airplane also owned a yacht, was portrayed as a pioneer of capitalism with human face in Zadar. The quality of his products and fast delivery were from the very start elements that this entrepreneur "held as sacred". Thus, Inox, the only producer of replacement parts for yachts in Yugoslavia, manufactured from special types of steel, only had customers abroad and did not have any backlog. "The company has been portrayed as an example of successful management in almost every medium in Croatia, at least once," Marijacic wrote.
However, the idyll was soon to end. Lezaic, described as "an extremely honest person, very polite and civil, absolutely dedicated to his work," announced in the same article his forthcoming departure from Zadar, since his family was experiencing all sorts of traumas, such as when his son was beaten up at school because he could not tell his ethnicity when asked. Lezaic confirmed that an unprecedented campaign had been organized in Zadar, against him and other ethnic Serb entrepreneurs, by the ruling party [HDZ]. "I have decided to sell everything and leave. I am not involved in politics. I have never been a member of any political party, neither before nor now," he said to Vjesnik announcing imminent departure to Italy.
A year later, weekly Arena, in an article also signed by Ivica Marijacic, described Neven Lezaic as a "fugitive local powerbroker". Neven Lezaic was not anymore a successful, but "successful" entrepreneur, who had made on Belgrade TV a whole series of "malicious charges" against Croatia and Zadar because he had allegedly been prevented from conducting business. "Of course, he did not say anything about a huge loan he owed to Dalmatinska Bank in Zadar, and that he had obtained everything he had in Zadar, not always honestly," Marijacic wrote.
In the period between those two articles Neven Lezaic failed to sell his company. Although he was prepared to accept an unrealistically low price - according to him the overall value of the company was about $2.25 million at the time - some circles wanted Inox for free. That is why Lezaic was exposed to additional pressure.
"They made death threats daily, threw bombs in front of the house," Lezaic says for Feral Tribune. "Instead of protecting me, the police incited extremists to continue with pressure and provocations. Some policemen even took part in the provocations themselves, when they carried out a spectacular arrest and searched my house as if I had been a worst criminal. I simply could not survive in Zadar at the time Even my best friends, ethnic Croats, started avoiding me. The culmination was on July 20, 1991, when an acquaintance from the State Security Service in Zadar told me in confidence that it had been decided at a Police meeting to arrest me and to charge me with sewing uniforms for the Army of Krajina in my factory, and that it would be best for me to immediately leave Croatia. After that I saw no other choice but to escape with my family as soon as possible..."
After that Lezaic's house, together with another 800 or so houses in Zadar, was blown up and razed to the ground, while his property, with a blessing from the authorities, got a new owner. To be more specific, it changed several owners. Consequently, two years ago, Lezaic initiated several lawsuits in which he demands return of his property.
Lezaic sued the Republic of Croatia for an illegal bankruptcy proceedings of Inox, as according to the law at the time, bankruptcy proceeding could not have been initiated without a statement given by the owner, which never happened. However, the district court in Split simply ignored that fact. The commercial court in Split, on the other hand, sold the property that was not included in the bankruptcy proceedings, including a factory building, office building, storage building, regional storeroom, and other assets that the bankruptcy administrator Zdravko Belusic sold to the company Busola from Zadar. By the way, Belusic was the former pilot of Lezaic's airplane.
"According to court files, the bankruptcy administrator of Inox sold everything Inox had for $100,000! If he only bothered to cash in the insurance policy with the Croatia Insurance, he could have gotten $500,000. Need I say more? And he did not request that they pay for looted assets and such." Thus, Lezaic lost everything. His airplane is today property of the Zadar aircraft club, and the yacht was bought by an Austrian national.
The perfidious manner in which Lezaic was stripped off his property, which could not have been possible without cooperation of the judiciary, provides solid foundation for the belief that everything was planned in advance. For example, it is not clear why the bankruptcy took place in the first place, as the assets of the company were many times more valuable than its obligations. "Only in storage I had more than $1.75 million worth of stainless steel," Lezaic says. "I bought it when the price was low and sold when it went up. That steel could have always been sold without any trouble". The concocted bankruptcy was, Lezaic says, "a big bite for the thieves". "I had no financial obligations in Croatia, no debts at all. I only paid taxes and utilities, water and electricity, to the state. I had a loan from Komercijalna Bank Zadar for $25,000. When I left, all but $10,000 of that loan had been repaid."
Lezaic was unable to obtain Croatian documents for the whole seven years. His former pilot and bankruptcy administrator Belusic accused him of making threats. Belusic had allegedly heard of these threats from his neighbors who, again allegedly, heard Lezaic on the Banja Luka TV. Thus, the County Court in Zadar issued an arrest warrant for Lezaic, so that his first attempt to enter Croatia in 1998 was denied. Lezaic is still surprised that the Croatian judiciary accepted lawsuits based on hearsay; it was obvious that the only goal of those suits was to prevent him from returning to Croatia and reclaiming his property. The authorities have never charged Lezaic with anything.
How did Lezaic survive the war? He lived in Slovenia - where he is based even today and engaged in export-import trade - and in Greece and Italy.
He took his chance in 1992 in Moscow. A friend talked Lezaic into taking a potentially profitable business risk. Namely, he directed him to a Moscow piano factory that, because of the saturated local market, had about 4,000 pianos in storage. They were selling pianos for $70 a piece. Lezaic calculated that he could not lose. If he was unable to sell the pianos, he was convinced that he could sell metal parts from the pianos on the Western European market for significantly more than $70. The only problem in that endeavor was extraction of metal parts from pianos. Technically, that could only be done by breaking the pianos one by one with an axe and then pulling metal pieces out of them. Lezaic was, however, prepared to assume even that risk, and that turned out to be justified. After the purchase of pianos, he sold all of them to Simpo from Vranje at a four times higher price...
"If that did not happen, I would have been lost. That was the initial capital that helped me to survive."
Will Lezaic be able to recover at least a part of his property, or will the case wind its way all the way to Strasbourg? The Croatian judiciary will get its chance first. If their verdict does not differ from the one they made in the years after Lezaic's departure, or expulsion, that will be a significant indicator of how much the Croatian judiciary has really changed in comparison with those shameful years.