Mercator-H, a subsidiary of the Fortenova group, sold the large business complex Super Konzum Radnička to Ante Bračić, a Croatian-Slovenian entrepreneur connected with Pavle Vujnovac in a series of companies engaged in real estate, and he was allowed to register a mortgage for a loan on the same property, N1 learns.
Neither from the outside nor from the inside are there any traces that the property, which was a special pride of Agrokor’s business, has undergone a new acquisition: the office building at Ulica grada Vukovara 269/B (business shopping center), underground garage, and courtyard, all on a lavish 35,741 square meters of land in the city center, previously owned by Mercator-H d.o.o. – a company that entered the Agrokor group of companies after the acquisition in 2014, and then the Fortenova group – was sold to a company owned by Croatian-Slovenian entrepreneur Ante Bračić in November 2022 for €20,479,512.45, and Ante Bračić’s companies took out a loan from the Slovenian SPARKASSE – €15,359,634.34, and the Super Konzum Radnička property was pledged for the loan, writes N1.
In simplified terms, the owner of Super Konzum is no longer the Fortenova group, a company that emerged thanks to the lex Agrokor, a law designed by the government of Andrej Plenković, and in which the new owner, an entrepreneur who made his first millions importing gas from the Russian Gazprom through the company PPD, Pavle Vujnovac, dominates, but the Fortenova group sold the entire complex to entrepreneur Ante Bračić – who is unequivocally a business partner of Pavle Vujnovac “outside” of Fortenova.
In doing so, the Fortenova group, to open space for Ante Bračić’s acquisition, first freed the property from previous encumbrances, i.e., paid off a fund from the United Kingdom that had claims on that property (KROLL TRUSTEE SERVICES LIMITED), and then Bračić, together with the CEO of Mercator-H, Spomenka Bilić, arranged for the Ljubljana bank, BANKA SPARKASSE, to approve a loan to Bračić’s companies precisely based on the registration of those properties.
Considering that Super Konzum still operates at that address, it can be concluded that today the same Super Konzum pays rent to the new property owners in which it operates. Thus, from the Fortenova group, which was the owner of the property where Super Konzum operates until November last year, rent is now being paid to the company of entrepreneur Ante Bračić – who acquired that property with the help of a new mortgage registration precisely on that property.
This is a long-time business partner from the group that has been conducting various real estate businesses related to Pavle Vujnovac for several years. For example, they were together in the venture to build the huge View hotel in Postira on Brač. Ante Bračić appears in several companies, together in combination with Josip Jurčević and Pavle Vujnovac, Zoran Gobec, and Damir Spudić (a member of the Management Board and finance director of Vujnovac’s company Energia naturalis – ENNA).
N1 did not receive answers to questions from Bračić and Fortenova except for this sentence: “The Fortenova group continuously works on strengthening its market and financial position, thus conducting activities related to the reallocation and better management of capital, which includes putting into function the capital that the Group has in real estate,” states a letter from the Fortenova group signed by Anja Linić Sikavica, director of corporate communications.
Recently, the daily newspaper 24 sata reported that two more Konzums from the Fortenova group, both in quite attractive locations in Zagreb (Črnomerec and Trešnjevka), were sold to the private company Arh koncept founded by Pavle Vujnovac in 2018 (for some time, Josip Jurčević was its director, and today Vujnovac is also its director).
