Politika
The Politika is the oldest daily newspaper in the country, founded by the journalist Vladislav Ribnikar in 1904 and printed in a recognizable large format. The readers of this newspaper are from the older generation, the middle class, and the highly educated. Politika became a joint-stock company in 1997, owned and controlled by the state. During the 90s, the Politika was under the significant control of then-President Slobodan Milošević and his authoritarian regime.
WAZ media group from Germany bought 50% of Politika's shares and registered the new company "Politika novine i magazini" in 2001. The Austrian firm OST Holding GMBH, part of the WAZ network of companies, which had a formal stake in Politika, first offered the state to buy back the shares, and then in 2012, sold 50% of the stake to an unknown Russian firm, East Media Group, founded just a few months before concluding the multi-million dollar deal, causing outrage from the academic community and speculation about who is the actual owner. The President of the Supervisory Board of Politika AD, Jovan Simić, told the Journalists' Association of Serbia at the time that no one informed him of anything and that he found out about the sale of Politika while on vacation.
This transfer of ownership was not reported to the Commission for the Protection of Competition, which therefore initiated the sale investigation procedure. The Commission's report from 2014 states that the speed of the transaction realisation is disputed but that this can be explained by the fact that the lawyer of the Russian company was previously the deputy director of the Business Registers Agency between 2005 and 2008. The Commission imposed a measure against the Russian company prohibiting the alienation of "Politika novine i magazini."
The Commission also stated that during the investigation process, it did not receive complete or even accurate information from persons related to the Russian company, namely the CEO Uroš Stefanović and the 100% owner Aleksandar Trbović. The Commission concluded that Stefanović and Trbović are related to Miroslav Bogićević, a businessman from Šabac and owner of MB Farmakom, who was close to the Democratic Party. The CEO of the Russian company, Uroš Stefanović, was employed in the Moscow representative office of Bogićević's company Farmakom, and Aleksandar Trbović, the owner of East Media Group from Moscow, is a relative of Miroslav Bogićević.
In an interview for the Journalists' Association of Serbia in 2016, Bogićević said that he is behind the Russian East Media Group and that he bought shares in Politika as a favour and at the request of the former president of Serbia, Boris Tadić.
The Commission for the Protection of Competition lifted the ban on East Media Group from selling shares in Politika in April 2022, and the following month, 50% of the shares that officially belonged to Trbović were bought by Media 026, Bojan Rajić's company, the owner of the Večernje novosti.
At the constitutive meeting of Politika a few months later, the brothers Boban and Bojan Rajić and Bojan Simić were appointed as representatives of Media 026. Miroslav Bogićević told the Nova portal he had confidence in the Rajić brothers, who were "big buyers" of his dairy.
The remaining 50% of shares still belong to Politika AD, owned by various state entities.
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 38 articles published in the Politika.
According to the BIRN database "Openly about open calls" (Javno o javnim konkursima), Politika AD was awarded 1.4 million dinars in three public tenders in 2021 and 2022.
Audience Share
6.49%
Ownership Type
Private
Geographic Coverage
National
Content Type
Paid content: 70-75 RSD per copy (2023)
Media Companies / Groups
Politika AD
Media 026
Ownership Structure
The publisher of the Politika is Politika novine i magazini, which is 50% owned by Boban Rajić's company Media 026 and 50% by the state-owned Politika AD.
Individual Owner
General Information
Founding Year
1904
Affiliated Interests Founder
Was a journalist and founder of the Politika daily newspaper. Ribnikar participated in the Balkan Wars as a reserve officer and was killed at the beginning of the First World War in the battle on the Drina in 1914. After his death, the Ribnikar family inherited Politika.
Affiliated Interests Ceo
Has been the CEO of Politika since 2008. She came to that position from Zepter International - Serbia at the suggestion of the Board of Directors of Politika AD, a state-owned company holding 50% of the shares in Politika novine i magazini.
In 2010, she was fined 15,000 dinars, and the newspaper Politika 100,000 dinars because the court decided that the journalist Svetlana Vasović Mekina was fired unlawfully. In the same year, there were mass layoffs in Politika, and in 2023 the dismissed workers haven't yet seen the end of the court proceedings that reached the Supreme and Constitutional Courts.
Namely, the documentation available to the Journalists' Association of Serbia shows that Glišić Simić was appointed to the position of the CEO in December 2008, for one year that expired before the dismissal of a group of employees, including Svetlana Vasović Mekina.
In 2016, Ljiljana Smajlović resigned as the editor-in-chief of the Politika because, as she said, the management did not support her editorial policy. Soon, she received a decision on dismissal, which, among others, was unlawfully brought by Glišić Simić, as ruled by the First Local Court of Belgrade in 2018.
Domestic news organizations further questioned the fact that Glišić Simić remained in the position of the CEO without clear legal grounds, and she remains in that position to this day.
Bought a 50% stake in Politika from East Media in May 2022, a month after the Commission for the Protection of Competition lifted the company's ban on selling its stake in Politika. The annotation on banning the sale of East Media shares was published on the website of the Business Registers Agency in 2014. Although he was never officially registered as the owner of shares in Politika, the controversial businessman and owner of MB Farmakom, Miroslav Bogićević, confirmed for the Nova.rs portal that he sold his shares in the company to Rajić.
Previously, Rajić bought the Večernje novosti in 2019, and his company Media 026 holds 100% of shares in Novosti AD. Rajić is the owner of Rajić Invest, with a 100% stake in Media 026, and the CEO of the family company Coka Holding which bought the former Smederevo giant Dunav AD.
Dunav was bought in 2008 by Milica Stanković from Smederevo, the wife of Boban's brother, Bojan Rajić. The company Coka from Smederevo, whose owners were Bojan and Boban Rajić, asked for the Agency’s consent to the Dunav contract assignment from the original buyer, Milica Stanković, which the Agency approved in 2010.
The Rajić family grew from small local merchants into a powerful and wealthy family linked to the controversial privatization of Želvoz from Smederevo.
Until the end of 2014, Rajić was the CEO of Mega Invest 2013, replaced by Olivera Anđelković, the current CEO of Novosti. The owner of Mega Invest today is Coka, the family company of the Rajić, and until the end of 2017, the owner was Olivera Anđelković's company RB Invest.
Affiliated Interests Editor-In-Chief
States on his LinkedIn profile that he graduated from the Faculty of Law in Belgrade and has worked in Politika for 22 years. He replaced Žarko Rakić, who retired in 2020, as the acting editor-in-chief of the Politika.
Contact
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.
