Russian companies in Srpska made a loss of 2.6 billion KM

BANJALUKA - The accumulated loss of the Optima Group, the Modrič Oil Refinery, the Brod Oil Refinery and "Nestro Petrol", which operate within the Nestro Group, at the end of last year exceeded 2.6 billion marks, the CAPITAL portal reveals.
These companies owned by the Russian "Njeftegazinkor" last year, according to the financial reports that CAPITAL had access to, continued to accumulate losses, and Optima Group of Banjaluka led the way, whose accumulated loss reached a record 1.7 billion marks.

The accumulated loss of the Brod Oil Refinery last year amounted to 821 million KM, while the Modriča Oil Refinery had a loss of 108.8 million KM.

At the end of the list of Russian losers is "Nestro Petrol" with an accumulated minus of 1.9 million marks.

Although the revenues of the Optima Group of Banjaluka almost doubled last year compared to the year before last and amounted to around 923 million marks, this company is still in a big loss and in 2022 it ended in the minus of 28.2 million KM.

When it comes to 2021, they had revenues of 502.9 million KM, and ended that year with a loss of 194.3 million marks.

Judging by the financial reports, they also significantly increased the number of employees, so last year they had 137 employees, while in 2021 they employed 86 employees.

We remind you that CAPITAL previously announced that the Russian owners of "Optime" showed that in less than three years they pumped 1.77 billion marks into the company through recapitalization.

However, all this took place under the veil of secrecy and far from the public eye, so that even the competent institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina did not have information about these transfers.

The Brod refinery is the biggest loser
When we talk about other companies within the Nestro group, the biggest loser is certainly the Brod Oil Refinery, which ended last year with a loss of 42.5 million marks, while at the end of 2021 they were in the red by as much as 115.8 million KM.

What is interesting is that this refinery, which normally has not been working for five years and has not been processing crude oil, achieved revenues of almost 70 million marks last year, while at the end of the year before last they had revenues of around 3.5 million KM.

The "Modriča" oil refinery ended the year 2022 with a loss of 1.5 million marks.

The only company that operates within the framework of the aforementioned group, and which ended last year in the red, is "Nestro Petrol".

They showed that their total profit last year was 20.7 million marks, while the net profit was about two million marks.

The Brod oil refinery was privatized in 2007 together with the Modriča oil refinery and the "Nestro Petrol" gas station network to the Russian company "Njeftegazinkor" for 236 million KM. Privatization was carried out in the most non-transparent way, through direct bargaining, and the Law on the Privatization of the Oil Industry was adopted by the National Assembly at a session closed to the public for the first time in history. The sales contract and accompanying annexes were never published, despite numerous requests from the media and the public to know which obligations were assumed by the Republika Srpska and which by the Russian company, whose majority owner was unknown.