{"id":33807,"date":"2021-10-20T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-20T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ostro.si\/?p=33807"},"modified":"2026-06-03T11:46:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T09:46:49","slug":"a-caribbean-haven-for-biogas-assets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ostro.si\/en\/stories\/pandora-papers\/a-caribbean-haven-for-biogas-assets\/","title":{"rendered":"A Caribbean haven for biogas assets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u00bbThe global financial crisis plunged many companies into crisis in 2011, which is why we are especially proud to be an exception\u00ab, said Miran Hr\u017eenjak, the then CEO of the Maribor-based company Keter Organica, in their business report for the year.<\/p>\n

He had reason to be optimistic. Keter Organica, which was involved in the design and construction of biogas power plants, had by then built or upgraded twelve biogas plants, mostly for investors in eastern Slovenia. <\/p>\n

The company was described by the media as \u00bbthe leading provider of biogas plants\u00ab. In just two years, the company increased its revenue 840-fold, from less than 20,000 euro in 2009 to 16.6 million euro in 2011. <\/p>\n

But in the end the remarkable story of Keter Group unfolded in line with the financial crisis scenario, only with a delay of a few years. The company\u2019s growth was fuelled by bank loans that proved too high for investors to repay. <\/p>\n

In the final stages, the banks transferred 43.3 million euro of defaulted debts owed by over-indebted investors in Keter\u2019s biogas plants to the state. Bad loans were later taken over by the state-owned Bank Assets Management Company (BAMC). <\/p>\n

As one of the investors, who wished to remain anonymous, told O\u0161tro, they were assisted in raising bank loans by Keter Group, which at the time promoted itself as the only provider of turnkey biogas plants.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the majority of them had to hand over the keys to their biogas plants to liquidation managers. One such investor was Domen Jur\u0161a, a self-employed entrepreneur from Ljutomer. In 2011, Keter built a biogas plant for him in Sredi\u0161\u010de ob Dravi and fthree years later BAMC filed a court petition to start a bankruptcy procedure against Jur\u0161a. <\/p>\n

\u00bbI was cornered\u00ab, he explained to BAMC in 2014 when they requested clarifications about the lease agreement he struck with a company called Pulverem, documents presented to the District court Ptuj by BAMC show.<\/p>\n

It is unclear who exactly backed Jur\u0161a into a corner, however O\u0161tro\u2019s investigation revealed that Pulverem, a serial leaser of biogas plant, was part of a network of companies that gradually transferred ownership of assets of Keter-built biogas plants in 2013 and 2014 to insulate them from creditors.<\/p>\n

When one of the first biogas plants, located in Zgornje Pirni\u010de, went bankrupt in 2013, a company called Solvus emerged. It was owned by an unknown businessman Milan Strnad from Ra\u010de. Solvus bought defaulted debts owed by the plant owner to four Keter companies and consequently, through an enforced payment, appropriated 413,000 euros of biogas plant equipment. <\/p>\n

Strnad\u2019s company sold the remainder of defaulted debts it had bought to the company of a Maribor-based financial advisor Roman H\u00fcbl. His company, most likely using debt set-off, bought another generator worth 395,000 euro from the biogas plant in Zgornje Pirni\u010de. <\/p>\n

The Pandora Papers<\/a> show that Strnad and H\u00fcbl operated via the same British Virgin Islands company \u2013 RH International. The company\u2019s beneficial owners changed twice between 2013 and 2016 and ultimately it was Strnad that formally took it over. O\u0161tro\u2019s investigation reveals that RH International had been implicated in bankruptcy procedures of at least three biogas plants. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Photo: Matej Pov\u0161e<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
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Expert on defaulted debts<\/h3>\n

H\u00fcbl, who has experience in insolvency proceedings listed on his LinkedIn profile, took over as director of Strnad\u2019s company Solvus in November 2014. Very soon afterwards, Solvus petitioned to initiate a bankruptcy proceeding. <\/p>\n

By then, at least 2.2 million euro had been ploughed into Solvus from Keter Organica through a subsidiary. Keter Organica invested this as recapitalisation, while Solvus recorded it as loans \u2013 that it never repaid. <\/p>\n

Keter Organica\u2019s investments were consequently never recouped and three years later it went bankrupt. The liquidation manager approved 12.9 million euro of claims by creditors, but the company has been depleted of all assets. He was only able to realise assets worth just over 6,000 euro, which he used to partially cover the costs of the proceedings. <\/p>\n

Keter Invest, once the holding company of Keter Group, dissolved in a similar manner. The bankruptcy administrator approved as much as 73 million euro of claims, of which roughly a third were BAMC\u2019s. Despite such vast sums, the company had no assets. <\/p>\n

A decade after Keter Group\u2019s rise, its loan operations remain the subject of law enforcement investigations. The Specialised State Prosecutor’s Office for instance told O\u0161tro that three persons linked to Keter Invest are under investigation on suspicion of falsification or destruction of business documents and fraud, and deception in obtaining loans. <\/p>\n

In addition, they have submitted a request for an investigation on suspicion of money laundering against two persons linked to Keter Invest, but the court hasn\u2019t decided on the case yet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Partners in Belize<\/h3>\n

In the receivership of Solvus, H\u00fcbl as the CEO, recommended a change of the company’s core business activities. Until then, the company had been involved in debt buying, but the new focus would be on electricity production, he explained in the company\u2019s 2015 restructuring plan. <\/p>\n

In autumn 2014, Solvus leased a biogas plant in Sredi\u0161\u010de ob Dravi after the plant\u2019s owner, the self-employed entrepreneur Domen Jur\u0161a, ran out of money because he could not pay the high loan instalments.<\/p>\n

It appears that Solvus negotiated favourable lease terms with the help of Mutui, a company headed by H\u00fcbl\u2019s business partner Ur\u0161ka \u010cuje\u0161. Mutui enforced the repayment of Jur\u0161a\u2019s unpaid debt of 341,000 euro by Jur\u0161a by taking over a part of the biogas plant equipment. <\/p>\n

Six months later, H\u00fcbl and Jur\u0161a signed an anex to the lease agreement that stated: \u00bbThe parties hereby agree that the biogas plant equipment is not owned by the lessor.\u00ab This was also one of the reasons for a 50% reduction in lease payments, from 10,000 euro to only 5,000 euro per month.<\/p>\n

In 2016, RH International took over Solvus, but this was merely a formality. The Pandora Papers disclose that during that time Strnad in fact controlled both companies. <\/p>\n

The following year, he embarked on a new business.<\/p>\n

\u00bbZohra, I have a new order from Milan Strnad\u00ab, an employee of the Dubai-based corporate registrar SFM informed her coworker in March 2017, an internal email shows.<\/p>\n

Strnad had also planned to set up a company named MF International in Belize, however O\u0161tro could not found a confirmation in the Pandora Papers that he had in fact registered it. The documents reveal that in May 2017 he established a company in Belize with a different name, Pro International. <\/p>\n

Pro International was soon taken over by Roman Stropnik, who was at that time under investigation by the Slovenian financial administration for failure to pay VAT, as reported by O\u0161tro in a Pandora Papers investigation last week.<\/p>\n

In the company\u2019s business plan, which he provided to SFM, Stropnik stated that Pro International would be engaged in buying receivables, mainly in the construction sector. In a telephone call with O\u0161tro, though, he claimed that the company had been established to carry out a business project that had fallen through. <\/p>\n

What this was remains unclear, but the project may have been connected with real estate on the Croatian coast. In the company\u2019s business plan, Stropnik listed a contact number that no longer exists, but was then used by Polaris, a Croatian company. Polaris\u2019 assets included land near the village of Pirovac in central Dalmatia. <\/p>\n

From September 2017, the CEO of Polaris was Roman H\u00fcbl.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n