The Zagreb Holding utility conglomerate could soon be subjected to debt enforcement over the debt of tens of millions of kuna, Jutarnji List daily reported on Monday.

According to the daily, the potential debt enforcement was initiated by the Reoma waste management company, which on Friday sent enforcement documents to the Cistoca public sanitation company. The reason, they said, is that Holding hasn’t paid them 14 million kuna for the removal of bulky waste.

Also, the Ce-Za-R company, connected with C.I.O.S. owner Petar Pripuz, is today also initiating debt enforcement collection against Holding, they confirmed, over a debt of 11 million kuna, while the construction company Ingra, or Laniste, is demanding about 30 million kuna from Holding, which Holding owes for the lease of the Arena sports hall.

Ingra also warned Holding that the termination of contract with their company Laniste would result in the City and Holding having to pay €120 million and a takeover of the Arena hall. All these sums come on top of an already difficult financial situation for the City and Zagreb Holding, which has now become a debtor (although it conducts about 500,000 debt enforcement proceedings per year over unpaid bills).

Holding ended last year with a loss of 250 million kuna, which former Management Board chair Ana Deban-Stojic said was due to the pandemic, and last week, about several dozens of millions kuna of unplanned expenses was incurred due to the rupture and reconstruction of water supply pipes in Selska Street.

At the beginning of Mayor Tomislav Tomasevic’s term in office, the City borrowed 400 million kuna from banks, and the budget is also burdened by loans of 750 million kuna from the state (due in May 2022), as well as by an additional loan of 150 million kuna from the state for repairing the damage from the earthquake.

As for Holding’s current debts, those are mostly outstanding liabilities in the new management’s term. The Reoma Group is therefore claiming 14 million kuna for the period from April to August for the removal of bulky waste (invoices are issued with a 60-day delay) plus default interest of 100,000 kuna.

This is a 90 million kuna deal from 2019, which Holding closed during the term of Milan Bandic with the Reoma Group and the Ce-Za-R company. The contract expired in August this year due the capacity being filled up, and Tomasevic then cancelled the new tender for bulky waste removal and announced the procurement of two crushers so that the City could do the job on its own and save 33 million kuna, Jutarnji List reported.