After deploying his heavy machinery to protect Serbia’s presidency building from anti-government protesters, Mile Samardzija secured a 1.1 million-euro contract with a company part-owned by the state.
One March morning last year, before the sun was up, a convoy of tractors and diggers snaked through downtown Belgrade and parked, in a line, around the Serbian presidency building and the park in front of it.
Days later, a protest was due, staged by a student-led movement calling for accountability for the deaths of 16 people when a concrete canopy at a newly renovated railway station in northern Serbia collapsed in November 2024.
Serbia’s then president, Aleksandar Vucic, warned of plans by the protesters to incite “major violence”.
The heavy machinery was there as a buffer between the protesters and Vucic’s supporters.
Among them were diggers of a company called Dzimi Commerce, diggers that Serbia’s NIS oil company – majority-owned by Russian Gazprom – and provincial authorities in the northern province of Vojvodina had hired for years. Until August this year, Dzimi Commerce was co-owned by 63-year-old Mile Samardzija, a close backer of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, SNS, before he transferred his 50 per cent share to his daughter. Samardzija remains a director.
In the end, there was no “major violence”. The tractors and diggers had their tyres slashed and windows broken, but this was a small price to pay for Samaradzija.
In January this year, his company received its most lucrative public contract yet, worth 1.1 million euros, with NIS subsidiary Naftagas, BIRN can reveal. Though Gazprom holds a majority stake in NIS, just under 30 per cent is still in Serbian state hands.
Experts say the case highlights the cosy, mutually beneficial relationship between the SNS and certain Serbian businesses, which put their resources at the ruling party’s disposal in return for financial rewards.
“Driven by the interest of profit, many are ready to enter into a pact with the authorities,” said Bozo Draskovic, a former board member of Serbia’s Anti-Corruption Agency.
“And in the service of that business, they put all their resources at their disposal – equipment, machines, means of transport, even workers.”
The collaboration appears to go even further in the case of Dzimi Commerce.
According to police case files seen by BIRN, the company’s co-owner of Dzimi Commerce, Ljiljana Teslic, reported Samardzija to the police last year for allegedly threatening her.
Teslic’s lawyer said Samardzija had been trying to push her out of the firm – with the help of “SNS representatives”.
BIRN contacted Samardzija, Dzimi Commerce, Naftagas, and the SNS for comment but none of them responded. Teslic declined to comment.
Close ties to Vucic regime
Dzimi Commerce employees pose for a group photograph at an SNS election rally in Novi Sad on May 19, 2024. Photo: Mile Samardzija Facebook.
The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, has repeatedly flagged the vulnerability of Serbia’s public enterprises to corruption, while BIRN and other investigative media regularly report on companies close to the SNS benefiting disproportionately from public contracts.
Headquartered in the northern town of Sombor, Dzimi Commerce was founded in 2000 as jointly owned by Teslic and Samardzija.
Samardzija is a vocal supporter of the ruling party, his company’s trucks regularly plastered with the SNS campaign slogan ‘Serbia Wins’.
In a photograph from May 19, 2024, Samardzija and his employees were captured attending a SNS election rally in Novi Sad, in their work shirts and holding the company flag.
According to a source familiar with the company, Samardzija was brought into the SNS fold by Zoran Rus, a former speaker of the Sombor Assembly and former SNS chief in the town.
Rus is currently the acting director of the Directorate for Safety and Health under the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.
A photograph obtained by BIRN shows Samardzija and Rus posing in front of the company HQ, Samardzija holding a glass of wine, Rus a small glass of rakija.
For years, Dzimi Commerce was one of Naftagas’ small contractors. That changed in January 2026, when it secured a two-year contract worth 1.1 million euros, excluding VAT, for “transport services and work machine services”.
Bank transaction data reviewed by BIRN show that within 10 months of the contract being signed, Dzimi Commerce had already invoiced Naftagas for 70 per cent of the value – 91.9 million dinars from a total contract value of 130 million dinars.
Dzimi Commerce billed Naftagas for the use of its machines over periods of 21 or 22 hours a day, according to logs seen by BIRN. One invoice billed for 24 hours supposedly worked on the last day of March this year.
Asked how realistic it would be for a machine to be in use 20 or more hours per day, one employee who spoke with BIRN on condition of anonymity replied: “In my experience, a shift that long can’t be logged. Six or seven hours is an average working day, but working over 12 hours is impossible.”
Another, who also asked not to be named, said he was present when “the machines were barely working at all”, yet he was told by the company to log a minimum of five hours of service.
“There were days when not a single machine was engaged, or [they worked] only a little or minimally, and five hours were written down regardless.”
Draskovic told BIRN: “Company owners are driven by economic interest, for them it’s business. But that business is no longer free business and market competition, but privileged business that is obtained because of political connections.”
He said the money generated is often “later used for political purposes”, i.e. returned in part to the party or redirected for party activities.
Wedge between long-time partners
Dzimi Commerce truck displaying the Serbian Progressive Party’s (SNS) campaign slogan, ‘Serbia Wins’. Photo: Private archive.
The student movement will bid to unseat the SNS and Vucic, its candidate for prime minister, in elections on October 25.
But Samardzija’s deepening ties with the SNS have already driven a wedge between him and his business partner, Teslic, according to insiders and documents obtained by BIRN.
Their relationship began to deteriorate in late 2023 and early 2024, as Samaradija drew closer to the SNS. In documents submitted by Teslic to the police, she claims that the SNS is behind a bid by Samarzija to drive her out of the company.
Samaradzija, “with the support, assistance, and suggestion of SNS representatives, is trying to drive my client Ljiljana Teslic out of the company and seize her co-ownership share”, a lawyer for Teslic wrote to the Internal Control Sector of the Serbian Interior Ministry in a letter dated September 28 last year and seen by BIRN.
According to the documents obtained by BIRN, Teslic reported Samardzija to the police for allegedly threatening her after she refused to give up her shares in Dzimi Commerce, several months before the company landed the 1.1-million euro deal with Naftagas.
According to the police complaint, Teslic said Samardzija told her she would end up “underground”.
“The earth will swallow you,” he allegedly said, as witnessed by another employee.
According to the lawyer’s letter, police officers took a statement from Teslic but then searched her apartment and confiscated weapons belonging to her and her husband; Samaradzija, however, was not questioned or his premises searched, the letter states.
It also claims Samaradzija boasted of carrying a gun when he joined a make-shift camp of SNS supporters set up in front of the presidency and known as Caciland.
In the end, the police filed a criminal complaint against Samardzija, but the Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in Sombor dismissed it in April this year, saying Samardzija had not endangered Teslic’s security because the threat was made during a quarrel over a land purchase.