Željko Mitrović

Željko Mitrović started his career in the 1990s in a media environment that was strictly controlled by Slobodan Milošević and Mirjana Marković, the ruling spouses. Mitrović was a member of Mirjana Marković's partyJugoslovenska levica (JUL) and a federal representative of this party. He was in JUL since 1996, and in this party, he was the head of the marketing department. He was expelled from the party in 2002.

Using his close ties with the ruling elite, Mitrović launched the Pink radio station in 1993, and then obtained the national frequency for broadcasting Pink television in 1994. Just four years later, PINK became the leading commercial television station in the country.

Mitrović always maintains good relations with each new ruling structure.

Since 2012, Pink TV has published several videos and reports broadcast in central news programs targeting members of the opposition and public figures who criticize the regime of Aleksandar Vučić. One of those videos was of Oliver Ivanović, the opposition leader of Serbs from the north of Kosovo, who was killed just a few weeks after the video was broadcast on Pink TV.

Thanks to his close relations with state officials, Mitrović's business has been constantly expanding over the years in various areas and beyond the borders of Serbia. Today, Pink Media Group's businesses include: film production, radio and television broadcasting, satellite television production, music production, as well as airline services. Mitrović also had a stake (80.5%) in a chewing gum company called MGUM Technology.

The media mogul was also at the centre of a scandal in 2013, when his son, driving a BMW at an inappropriate speed, hit and killed a girl named Andrea Bojanić at a pedestrian crossing, and then fled the scene of the accident. Mitrović's son was sentenced to 12 months of house arrest and a one-year ban on driving a motor vehicle. He received a single sentence for both crimes: serious crime against public traffic safety and failure to offer assistance to a person injured in a traffic accident.