Fiat has
become embroiled in controversy after the
entire agreement with the Serbian government over a 2008
contract to plan to make a 700 million euro investment in ailing
state-owned Zastava car maker was blacked out in a copy
that was supplied to the country's anti-corruption body after its
request to examine.
This report courtesy of Adnkronos International:
Italian automaker Fiat
said it was protecting privileged information by
blacking out ''20 kilograms'' of paper the Serbian's
anti-corruption body received following its request for
documents related to a 700 million-euro deal.
Much of the
information "represents crucial commercial and
industrial secrets, indispensable for the success of a
joint undertaking," Turin, Italy-based Fiat said. It
claimed that a secrecy clause is in the "interest of the
company formed in partnership with the Republic of
Serbia as well as their shareholders."
Serbian media has
speculated that the government is covering up a business
deal that never came to fruition. Reports say Fiat may
never have paid any money and the government was in fact
financing the entire project with foreign loans for
political and marketing purposes.
Verica Barac, the head
of the Serbian Anti-Corruption Agency had asked the
government to supply her with the agreement and all
relevant documents. But she was shocked when she
received “20 kilograms of paper” in which details on
mutual financial obligations were blackened with ink.
Government spokesman,
Milivoje Mihajlovic, said Fiat demanded that parts of
the agreement be kept as secret to protect its business
operations and “for that reason can’t be made public.”
Fiat chief executive
officer Sergio Marchione and Serbian economy minister
Mladjan Dinkic in 2008 signed a joint-venture agreement
allowing Fiat to take over the Zastava automobile
factory in the city of Kragujevac and to launch
production of new automobile models destined for the
European market.
At the time of the
deal, Dinkic said Fiat Automobiles Serbia - 67 percent
owned by Fiat and 33 held by the Serbia government -
would produce 200,000 automobiles “over the next few
years.” Three and a half years later the project is
hardly off the ground, sparking suspicion that something
went wrong. For its part, Fiat was supposed to spend 700
million euros to retool the factory that was heavily
damaged in the 1999 NATO bombing. Serbia was to turn
over the factory to the Italian manufacturing giant,
provide infrastructure and invest 50 million euros. The
"the biggest foreign investment” in Serbia was billed as
a job generator in a country with high unemployment. Now
critics accuse Serbian president Boris Tadic of using
the deal to gain votes on ''false promises.''
