7.01.2023
Inside TradeWin24: Hidden Network of Financial Grifters
The founders of TradeWin24 are the same founders behind the now-liquidated Sinteza Invest Group. The largest individual shareholders of Sinteza Invest Group were Viktoria Group, linked to Milija Babović, Elixir Group, linked to Stanko Popović, as well as the individual shareholders Srdjan Bošković and Djordje Mandić.
Milija Babović, known by the false nickname Baja Seljak, and Stanko Popović, known by the false nickname Stanko Mutavi, are already well known to the public because of numerous scandals. They have been the subject of multiple investigations, even kidnappings, so their reputations are best reflected in the many articles anyone can find simply by typing their names into Google Search. Let us mention only Victoria Group in Serbia, Ensifolia Limited in Cyprus, and many others, always following the same modus operandi: take out loans, close the company under debt, push it into bankruptcy, and then open a new one. Milija Babović, who drove Victoria Group into complete bankruptcy and then passed it on to others, is now at an age when he should be walking his grandchildren, yet in the founding act of Tradewin24 he conceals his role, like a true “strong man,” behind his wife, so that no one would connect the old man with the dirty business carried out at Sinteza Invest Group and now continued through TradeWin24.
There is proverb in Serbia "Where all the Turks go, little Mujo goes as well", and so it is with Stanko Popović, who is likewise full of courage when it comes to standing behind his own actions, so he too pushes his wife into the founding act of TradeWin24, following the old saying: why should I take the fall when she can do it instead. Or perhaps he is hiding from something. Or from someone.
Given fraud they have done in Sinteza Invest Group, while above all using, and still using, both companies for fictitious trading, cash extraction without paying taxes, alleged currency hedging of their phantom foreign and domestic placements, and forex manipulation, all while hiding behind the supposed brokerage business with small investors, we believe that although they were accomplices in causing damage to the clients of Sinteza Invest Group, they were not the direct masterminds and executors of this dirty operation. That is why we will focus more closely on the real operators, who are also under investigation and have been convicted in several countries of the region, including Serbia. Let us first look at the details from the TradeWin24 statute, available on the website of the Serbian Business Registers Agency, regarding the ownership structure of TradeWin24:
Milija Babović, known by the false nickname Baja Seljak, and Stanko Popović, known by the false nickname Stanko Mutavi, are already well known to the public because of numerous scandals. They have been the subject of multiple investigations, even kidnappings, so their reputations are best reflected in the many articles anyone can find simply by typing their names into Google Search. Let us mention only Victoria Group in Serbia, Ensifolia Limited in Cyprus, and many others, always following the same modus operandi: take out loans, close the company under debt, push it into bankruptcy, and then open a new one. Milija Babović, who drove Victoria Group into complete bankruptcy and then passed it on to others, is now at an age when he should be walking his grandchildren, yet in the founding act of Tradewin24 he conceals his role, like a true “strong man,” behind his wife, so that no one would connect the old man with the dirty business carried out at Sinteza Invest Group and now continued through TradeWin24.
There is proverb in Serbia "Where all the Turks go, little Mujo goes as well", and so it is with Stanko Popović, who is likewise full of courage when it comes to standing behind his own actions, so he too pushes his wife into the founding act of TradeWin24, following the old saying: why should I take the fall when she can do it instead. Or perhaps he is hiding from something. Or from someone.
Given fraud they have done in Sinteza Invest Group, while above all using, and still using, both companies for fictitious trading, cash extraction without paying taxes, alleged currency hedging of their phantom foreign and domestic placements, and forex manipulation, all while hiding behind the supposed brokerage business with small investors, we believe that although they were accomplices in causing damage to the clients of Sinteza Invest Group, they were not the direct masterminds and executors of this dirty operation. That is why we will focus more closely on the real operators, who are also under investigation and have been convicted in several countries of the region, including Serbia. Let us first look at the details from the TradeWin24 statute, available on the website of the Serbian Business Registers Agency, regarding the ownership structure of TradeWin24:
The Fat Slovenian
All known for Mafioso style nicknames, Srdjan Bošković, 53 years old, better known as “the Fat Slovenian,” is under investigation by several institutions across the region, as reported by Slovenia’s most widely read newspaper "Delo" at this link.
According to Slovenia’s highest-circulation newspaper, the Fat Slovenian, originally from Montenegro, together with his partners and through his fruit-trading company “Eterra d.o.o.,” caused more than EUR 3.5 million in damage to the Slovenian company “Eta Kamnik” from Kamnik, Slovenia. Although the investigation is still ongoing, Bošković moved to Serbia, where within just a few years he managed to become the center of an affair in the Automobile and Motorcycle Association, while at the same time destroying everything he touched, including the companies “Grit Commerce d.o.o.” and “Fincor Properties d.o.o.,” in which he appears as an owner. After pushing these and other companies into financial ruin, he also opened the fast-food kiosk “Tri Lepe d.o.o.,” which also failed. Yet Bosković remains remembered in Serbian financial circles above all for one particular role. That most famous role is his position as owner and general director of Sinteza Invest Group, where he damaged the clients of Sinteza Invest Group and earned the revocation and banning of all licenses for Sinteza, the liquidation of the company under his management, and yet another entry in his glittering CV.
Now, apparently no longer satisfied with the client money taken through Sinteza Invest Group, because more money is allegedly needed for new banana orders, usually arriving from Ecuador, and as our sources report that authorities in the region are examining whether something more interesting to law enforcement than fruit is being transported from South America through this company, he decided to persuade the group to repeat the same financial scheme from Sinteza, hoping that there will always be enough naive and uninformed people, the only important thing being that such naive people are properly located, that is, that the “brokerage activity” is properly advertised. He is currently one of the owners of Tradewin24, but he is well aware of his reputation and his future legal responsibility, so, like the previous two shareholders, he does not expose himself publicly if the job can instead be done for him by his loyal servant, lawyer Igor Marković, the fictitious director, who knows of brokerage business only that it has something to do with money, other people’s money, of course.
The said Igor Marković appears in almost all companies tied to Srdjan Bošković, either as director, or authorized representative, or fictitious owner, always with one and the same goal: to anonymize the role of Srdjan Bošković. They are so successful in that endeavor that all companies in which the two of them appear are in financial distress, and they even managed to produce a loss of 9.3 million dinars at Tradewin24 in just one year of operations, which is already a serious talent. However, since Tradewin24’s financial reports deserve a separate examination, and since those financial statements make abundant use of data allegedly related to a foreign broker, with arbitrary figures that are difficult for the Serbian Tax Administration to verify abroad, we will help readers understand that better in another extensive article.
But before we turn to the very interesting financial statements of TradeWin24, let us return for a moment to the biographies of the members of this financial grifters’ group.
Bernie Madoff iz Žarkova
Speaking of talent, probably the most “talented” director and broker in recent Serbian history is Miroslav Radaković, who in brokerage circles liked to present himself as the Warren Buffett of Kotor, although everyone else calls him the Bernie Madoff of Žarkovo and Miki the Driller, because he enjoys drilling through client accounts. This untalented young man, driven by a desire to become the financial lighthouse of a suffering and financially uneducated Serbia, began appearing in the media at the very start of his professional career, hungry for fame, and if you want to see what his early work looked like, take a look at the following link here. Somewhat confused but determined to build a career under the bright lights of the big city, Miki Burgija from Žarkovo served us a four-episode series, and whoever survived it could tell the tale.
Unfortunately, the glorious financial career of Miki The Driller did not last long. He managed to destroy Sinteza Invest Group in just one year as director, rob client accounts, end up under investigation and police questioning, eventually be convicted, and also have his brokerage license revoked. More about this talent can be found at the link here.
To understand just how dramatic the fall of this so-called unpolished talent has been, it is enough to step back not so far in time and look at his “appearance” on "N1 TV" in 2016, where he spoke complete nonsense about Brexit. N1 itself quickly realized what kind of financial manipulator he was: after a strongly negative public reaction and public embarrassment, the station removed the recording from its YouTube channel almost immediately and never invited him back again, leaving us deprived of repeat broadcasts of our own Jezda for millennials.
But since Radaković loved media exposure, we cannot avoid looking at his many appearances in the print media as well. Out of many such cases, one stands out in particular: in a statement for the daily newspaper Kurir, he manipulated uninformed investors and presented himself as a financial genius, while promising potential clients astronomical returns, using the same vocabulary once used by Gazda Jezda and Dafina, the very same vocabulary with which he now sells fog through TradeWin24, together with the incompetent team he has gathered around himself, a team that does not even understand what kind of schemer they are dealing with. More about that can be found at the link here.
As can be seen from the attached material, Radaković claimed that top professionals are capable of earning a minimum of 40% annually on invested capital, which naturally raises the question of how he, as such a top professional, managed to drive Sinteza Invest Group into forced liquidation after only one year in the director’s chair. Or was that perhaps the real objective all along? Not to mention his claim that “the average investor with basic knowledge can earn 10–15% WITHOUT MAJOR PROBLEMS.” Gazda Jezda, Jugoskandik, and Dafina look like children compared with this new generation of financial clowns. It is common knowledge that even the largest hedge funds in the world struggle to achieve 10% annually, that the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund has averaged around 6.3% annually since 1998, and that the long-term return on the S&P 500, which is itself a financial benchmark, is below 10%. Yet Radaković was assuring uninformed clients that they would earn a minimum of 10%, while he, as a top professional, would make 40–80%. But only if they worked with him.
Another manipulation by this Bernie Madoff for millennials is hidden in the closing part of the text:
Radaković claimed that Sinteza was the first to bring to Serbia the model of investing on global stock exchanges, which is a LIE, and then went on to state that “at any moment you can sell your shares and turn them into cash, unlike savings or investments in real estate.” Translated from manipulator-speak, that means: give us your money, you will have liquidity, unlike with unsafe banks and real estate where access to your funds is not so easy. Less than 15 months after this paid article, the police were knocking on Radaković’s door, the Securities Commission revoked the licenses, Sinteza Invest Group went into bankruptcy, and the injured clients were left without their money and organized protests in front of Sinteza Invest Group’s offices. In exactly the same way, TradeWin24 now attracts clients, selling fantasies about massive profits, especially in cryptocurrencies, until the moment arrives when client accounts are once again completely emptied. In the end, drilling through client accounts is simply stronger than he is. We also asked Mr. Radaković for comment, but he persistently avoids our calls.
A very good question is how the Securities Commission, despite its own rulebooks and the Capital Market Law, allowed people of this reputation to establish the brokerage house TradeWin24 after such a collapse and fraud at Sinteza Invest Group. An even better question is how individuals with such reputations are still qualified shareholders of the TradeWin24 brokerage house. But we will deal with those failures of the Commission in greater detail in the second part.
Kasko Romeo
The last piece in the mosaic of this financial grifters’ group, though by no means the least important, is Djordje Mandić, better known as Kasko Romeo. He is like the youngest Dalton brother, the one nobody takes seriously except when they need to take his money for frequent recapitalizations and treat him like an idiot. He literally managed to unload the failed insurer Auctor Sollers onto the uninformed Austrians at Grawe Insurance, doing so by betraying his then business partner and co-owner.
Tragically, that partner later took his own life, and Djordje Mandić, instead of taking care of the partner who had essentially built the company and instead of leaving everything to the partner’s heirs, kept his own share for himself without the slightest restraint or conscience, and gave only the scraps to the heirs of his former partner so that he would not appear to be a complete scoundrel. That is the kind of people we are dealing with in Sinteza Invest Group and TradeWin24.
At present he is formally listed only as a founder of TradeWin24, and since he too likes to hide behind women because of his clearly catastrophic reputation, he placed his former secretary Stefani Marunović in the position of CEO of TradeWin24, so that she could play the role of director in between plastic surgeries and Instagram photoshoots. What a crew. If it were not so tragic, it would be funny.