ZAGREB, Oct. 5 (Xinhua) -- The state-appointed management of Agrokor unveiled on Thursday new debts of the biggest company in Croatia.
Ante Ramljak, Agrokor's state extraordinary manager, presented on Thursday at a press conference results of a financial study of the nine crucial companies in the Agrokor group.
The in-depth financial revision made by the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) reveals that Agrokor's companies are worth 13 billion HRK (about two billion U.S. dollars) less than it was shown in earlier official reports.
The most dramatic result is the company Konzum, Croatia's biggest supermarket chain. According to Ramljak, Konzum lost 1.8 billion kuna (2.8 million U.S. dollars) in 2016. A year earlier the lost was 1.4 billion kuna (2.2 million U.S. dollars), while the report of Agrokor under the leadership of the owner Ivica Todoric showed the profit for the same year at 247 million kuna (38.5 million U.S. dollars).
Another big company in the group, Tisak, a newspaper distribution chain, had a 64 million kuna (about ten million U.S. dollars) loss in 2015, while the company presented the positive result and a profit of 12 million HRK (1.9 million U.S. dollars) for the same year.
Agrokor owner Ivica Todoric announced earlier this week that he would file criminal complaints because of the leaked information in media that Agrokor misrepresented its profits. He rejects the allegations of concealed costs.
Agrokor's revenue reached 6.5 billion euros in 2015, almost 16 percent of Croatia's total GDP. It has around 40,000 employees.
In January 2017, it was announced that the company is on the verge of collapsing because of its huge debt. The Croatian government reacted promptly by setting up a special law to protect systematic enterprises from bankruptcy.
The law, nicknamed "Lex Agrokor", created a condition for the state to take over the management of the company. Although Ivica Todoric in April signed off the process of "extraordinary management", effectively putting Agrokor under control of the state, he now writes at his personal blog that he was forced to do it and that the law was not constitutional.
In late September, an anonymous criminal report was filed against Agrokor's extraordinary manager Ante Ramljak, Financial Minister Martina Dalic and others, accusing them of abuse of office.
