According to information from tportal, the loan for which the former head of Hypo bank, Tilo Berlin, has been reported to the state attorney’s office is the one used to purchase the former Ikea land near Sveta Nedelja, where the logistics center Business Park Zagreb has emerged.
Recall that Berlin and three of his associates are suspected of abusing their powers and causing Hypo bank a loss of 95 million euros by granting loans outside the official procedure. Among the problematic projects financed for dubious clients is a loan of 84 million euros received by a Croatian company operating in real estate. The Austrian Der Standard, in an article titled ‘The Loan that Traveled Around the World’, cites the client as Helios Properties, which purchased 100,000 square meters near Zagreb.
Tportal investigated the operations of this company in Croatia and discovered that it is a British real estate fund, Helios Properties, which acquired Business Park Zagreb in 2008, a logistics center located along the Zagreb – Ljubljana highway near the Sveta Nedelja junction. The intermediary in the sale was the company King Sturge (now known as Jones Lang LaSalle). The previous owner, the company that sold Business Park Zagreb to Helios, was the offshore company Mancando Limited from the Virgin Islands, which began construction of the center in 2005 after purchasing the land from Ikea, following the Swedish company’s withdrawal from the location near Sveta Nedelja. Namely, Business Park Zagreb is the legal successor of Ikea Zagreb, which can be verified in the court register.
