Kurir
Igor Žeželj has been the owner of the Kurir daily since January 2019.
Before Žeželj, the owner of the Kurir was Aleksandar Rodić, son of Radisav Rodić, who founded the Kurir in 2003. Since its founding, this newspaper has played a significant role in media tabloidization in Serbia, inventing political affairs and spreading incorrect information. The Kurir also inspired the establishment of other tabloids on the Serbian media scene. In 2005, a group of editors left the Kurir and founded the tabloid newspaper Press, and in 2012, Dragan J. Vučićević, a journalist and editor of the Press, founded the Informer. Former editors of the Kurir, Milan Lađević and Saša Milovanović, founded the tabloid Srpski telegraf in 2016.
In 2009, Radisav Rodić was arrested for tax evasion, and the Kurir came under pressure from the authorities. In those days, the media connected the arrest with Rodić's conflict with Mlađan Dinkić, the then Minister of Economy and Deputy Prime Minister. In the same year, controversial amendments to the Law on Public Information were made, which, according to the media, were a measure of discipline and fight against the Kurir. The adopted amendments drastically increased the penalties for media that do not follow the rules of the profession.
After the arrest of Radisav Rodić, his son Aleksandar took over the management of the daily newspaper. Since its founding, the Kurir has changed its editorial policy several times, but it has mostly remained the voice of the government. Under the leadership of Aleksandar Rodić, the editorial policy was in favor of the Democrats (then the ruling party). After the Democratic Party lost the 2012 elections, the Kurir changed its editorial policy – it started attacking former Democratic Party officials and reporting in favor of the Serbian Progressive Party. Such a policy of the paper continues to this day, with a short break in 2015. That year, Kurir tried to take over the management of the daily newspaper Politika, which led to a conflict with the authorities and the Serbian Progressive Party.
In November 2015, the famous Kurir front page "Sorry Serbia" (Srbijo, izvini) was published as an introduction to Aleksandar Rodić's article in which he apologizes to the citizens of Serbia because, as he states, he was forced to be part of Aleksandar Vučić's propaganda team. This conflict between Rodić and Vučić lasted several months, with mutual accusations and a war with the pro-government media. Soon the Kurir returned to its usual editorial policy.
During 2017, Kurir tried several times to find a strategic partner in one of the foreign companies, but all those attempts ended in failure.
The Umbrella Agreement for the sale of Adria Media Group (AMG), the publisher of the Kurir, was signed on October 1, 2018, and the public first learned about the Agreement from a BIRN article published ten days later. AMG then agreed on a strategic partnership with Wireless Media and the Mondo portal, owned by the state company Telekom Srbija. In this way, the state indirectly came back into the ownership of the media, even though it was obliged to leave.
As the negotiations between Wireless Media, Mondo, and AMG came to an end, so did the editorial policy of the Kurir - today, it is difficult to find an article critical of the current president of Serbia.
On December 28, 2018, Mondo Inc. became the owner of 100 percent of Adria Media Group (AMG), and the decision on ownership change was published on January 4, 2019, on the website of the Business Registers Agency (APR in Serbian). The price of this transaction remains unknown to the public because no acquisition document is publicly available.
Adria Media Group, the owner of Kurir until August 1, 2023, received about 32.5 million dinars for 63 projects from 2019 to 2022 in media content co-financing tenders from state institutions and local government bodies. Most of the projects (eight) were awarded by the City of Belgrade, giving Adria Media Group approximately ten million dinars in total.
In the report on compliance with the Code of Ethics for Journalists in daily newspapers from October 1, 2022, to January 31, 2023, the Press Council claimed Code violation in 288 articles published in the Kurir newspaper, putting this paper in the fifth place, behind the daily Srpski Telegraf (658), Alo (581), Informer (512), and Večernje novosti (328) by the number of violations.
Audience Share
10.66%
Ownership Type
Private
Geographic Coverage
National
Content Type
Paid content: 50 RSD per copy (2023)
Media Companies / Groups
Mondo Inc
Ownership Structure
The Kurir is published by Mondo Inc, a company whose ultimate owner is Igor Žeželj.
Until August 1, 2023, the publisher of the Kurir was Adria Media Group (AMG), dissolved due to the merger agreement with Mondo Inc. This agreement stipulates that all rights, obligations, and assets of AMG are transferred to the ownership of Mondo Inc. and that upon the entry into force of this agreement, AMG ceases to exist as a legal entity.
According to the Business Registers Agency, the owner of Mondo Inc. is Wireless Media. Wireless Media is owned by Mobil Media, whose 100% owner is Igor Žeželj.
Individual Owner
General Information
Founding Year
2003
Affiliated Interests Founder
Is a controversial Serbian businessman who founded Kurir in 2003. During the nineties, he was the owner of the company "ABC Product." He bought "Glas" (later "ABC Grafika") state printing house, which became the largest privately owned printing house during the regime of the late Serbian autocrat Slobodan Milošević. All the opposition newspapers, including "NIN," "Promene," "Demokratija," "Naša borba," "Vreme," and "24 časa", were printed in his printing house, as well as "Velika Srbija" of the Serbian Radical Party and "LID" of the Socialist Party.
The offshore company Ronaco System, registered in the US state of Delaware, contributed to the rapid rise of his empire. Rodić once stated that the owners behind the company Ronaco System are his partner Bruce Ralston and himself.
In 1998, he started the daily newspaper "Glas javnosti," and in 2003, the daily Kurir. In June 2009, he was accused of tax evasion. The District Prosecutor's Office in Serbia filed an indictment against Rodić and three other persons for alleged fraud, carried out by taking a loan of 22.8 million dinars from Komercijalna banka using false documents. They never paid back the loan, thus damaging the bank. The court sentenced him to two years in prison, but he was released at the end of the proceedings because he had already served the sentence while the court process was going on. Radisav Rodić is the father of Aleksandar Rodić, the former owner of the largest media group in the Balkans - Adria Media Group.
Affiliated Interests Ceo
The CEO of daily Kurir. According to the data from the Kurir website, Dragan Milić is a graduate of economics with many years of experience in the sale and distribution of printed publications. He started his career in Politika, where he worked for four years as the head of the circulation department. For the next eight years, he worked in Futura Plus as a sales manager and then in Centro-sinergija also as a sales manager. Since June 2013, Milić has been leading the sales and distribution of Adria Media Group. For more than ten years, he worked in press sales, planning, and distribution.
Affiliated Interests Editor-In-Chief
Was appointed editor-in-chief of the Kurir in June 2018. He graduated from the Faculty of Political Sciences and has worked for this daily newspaper since its foundation on May 6, 2003. In the meantime, he also worked as a journalist and editor in the daily newspaper Press.
Affiliated Interests other important people
Started her journalistic career in the daily newspaper Alo. Since 2014, she has worked at Kurir as an assistant and deputy editor-in-chief.
Was appointed editor-in-chief of the Kurir in June 2018. He is a lawyer by profession. For more than 20 years, he worked in different editorial offices of daily newspapers in Serbia as a journalist and editor. In addition to journalism, he was involved in PR and socially responsible business projects. Since 2014, he has been the editor of the Chronicle column in the Kurir.
Contact
Vlajkovićeva 8
Stari grad, Belgrade
E-mail: redakcija@kurir-info.rs
W: www.kurir.rs
T: + 381 11 6357 100
Financial Information
Revenue (in Mill. $)
Missing data
Operating Profit (in Mill. $)
Missing data
Advertising (in % of total funding)
Missing data
Market Share
Missing data
Further Information
Meta Data
Missing data on printed and sold circulation, market share and advertising revenue. Financial data is available only for the company that publishes the media, but not for the media itself.
