Miroslav Mišković
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Miroslav Mišković (Serbian Cyrillic: Мирослав Мишковић) (born July 5, 1945 in Kruševac, Serbia) is a Serbian businessman, the owner of the Delta Holding company. He is considered to be the richest person in Serbia, with his wealth estimated at approximately $1.5 billion as of 2006, according to the list of 100 wealthiest persons of the post-communist countries made by Polish magazine Wprost.[1] Mišković holds 38th place of this list, but is on the second place among the tycoons outside former Soviet Union, behind Jan Kulczyk from Poland.
Mišković was born in Kruševac, where he had graduated, before moving to Belgrade, where he gained his faculty diploma in economy in 1971. Afterwards, he has worked in Jugobanka and Trajal in Kruševac until 1977, when he moved to Župa Chemical Industries, where he became financial director in 1984 and the chief executive of the company in 1987, and he had remained on this position until 1990, when he became a vicepresident of the Serbian government, but has remained on this position for only six months. Meanwhile, Mišković has founded Delta M company (Delta M being a sort of abbreviation of his initials - double M), a company that became very successful in the following years, during Yugoslav wars and under the regime of Slobodan Milošević. Soon afterwards, he has founded Delta Bank (sold to Banca Intesa in 2004), that was to become the first part of Mišković's extremely successful Delta Holding corporation that works in agribusiness, retail, distribution, financial brokerage, real estate development and insurance.
Mišković's connection to Slobodan Milošević has never been obvious, except for the fact that he was a vice-president of the Government. After the overthrow of Milošević's regime, Mišković was linked to Dušan Mihajlović, the minister of police at the time and the other leaders of Democratic Opposition of Serbia. Mišković is today considered to be an important political figure with high influence on the leading politicians in Serbia.
Mišković was kidnapped April 9, 2001, but was released the next day, as the ransom money (estimated at about 7,000,000 German marks at the time) was paid 18 hours later. After the assassination of the Serbian prime minister Zoran Đinđić March 12, 2003, the abduction of Mišković was attributed to the same group that has been found responsible for the death of the prime minister, which has made other connections of the two crimes seem possible.
