03.03.2025
The Plantaže Affair: TradeWin24 Directors Tried to Fraudulently Take Over the Montenegrin Company Plantaže and Planned to Bankrupt It in Order to Move the Money to Serbia
Another criminal affair is shaking the brokerage house TradeWin24. As reported by the respected Montenegrin portal Standard, the Montenegrin public learned this month that during 2022 the directors of TradeWin24 tried to gain ownership of the Montenegrin company AD “13. Jul Plantaže” by pushing it into bankruptcy, while at the same time attempting to extract money through a fictitious financial advisory contract.
To recall, AD “13. Jul Plantaže” is a Montenegrin company engaged in the production of wine and brandy, a joint-stock company currently operating within the holding company Agrokombinat 13. jul. It is the largest vineyard and wine-producing company in Montenegro, and one of the largest companies in the country overall. The company is headquartered in Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro.
On the other hand, TradeWin24 is a brokerage house that emerged after the forced liquidation of Sinteza Invest Group, when clients were defrauded and the leading figures behind what is now TradeWin24 had their licenses revoked and were subjected to criminal and misdemeanor proceedings, with some of them also being convicted. Former directors and owners of Sinteza Invest Group then opened a new brokerage firm under the obscure name TradeWin24. From the very beginning of Sinteza Invest Group, the directors behind TradeWin24 also established a subsidiary called Sinteza Advisory, which was initially supposed to have an advisory and consulting role, but remained an empty shell company intended for fictitious extraction of money from related TradeWin24 entities through fake consulting services.
According to company registry extracts, the director and currently sole owner of Sinteza Advisory is Djordje Mandić, who is also a director and one of the owners of TradeWin24. Until 2020, the director of Sinteza Advisory was Srdjan Bošković, also one of the founders of TradeWin24. This duo never enters any business venture without the third founder of TradeWin24, convicted fraudster Miroslav Radaković, and this case was no exception. All three originate from Montenegro, which is of particular importance for the Plantaže Operation they attempted to carry out, unsuccessfully, of course, like everything else they have handled so far.
What did portal Standard report?
In an article by the respected investigative journalist Samir Rastoder, evidence was presented showing that in 2022 the company Sinteza Advisory, owned by the people behind TradeWin24, concluded a financial advisory contract with AD “13. Jul Plantaže,” but that shortly afterward the director of Plantaže realized the contract concealed an attempt by the fraudsters from Sinteza Advisory, in other words Tradewin24, to quietly take over Plantaže. Once they understood who they were dealing with, Plantaže withdrew from the arrangement, after which the director of Plantaže received a dismissal decision with suspicious reasoning. The State Audit Institution of Montenegro has meanwhile filed reports with the Montenegrin prosecution regarding irregularities in the company’s operations, and the Higher State Prosecutor’s Office has opened a case and the investigation is ongoing.
As Standard writes, the financial advisory contract was signed on July 20, 2022. More precisely, the contract involved an obligation to secure new liquid funds for Plantaže, which in essence would only be used to cover prior debts and obligations toward commercial banks in Montenegro. Under the agreement, Sinteza Advisory undertook to find financing to cover Plantaže’s liabilities, which at that moment amounted to 50 million euros.
“In other words, under this agreement Plantaže was supposed to borrow through Sinteza Advisory (Tradewin24) from some unknown lender, using money of unknown origin, and then use those funds to close existing debts, without first verifying who those lenders were and whether they were, at the very least, suspicious persons who could become owners of parcels surrounding Montenegro’s capital. Experts in this field therefore believe that this even opens the question of national security,” Standard writes.
“The contract was signed without the knowledge or decision of the board of directors, which had not even considered this business relationship, and signing this type of contract was not preceded by any tender procedure for selecting the service provider. In addition, and most dangerously of all, Plantaže wanted to engage a legal entity from Serbia, that is, an adviser for such an important matter, without the consent of the Government of Montenegro, which is a direct criminal offense even if a board decision had existed, since the majority owner is the state of Montenegro. Furthermore, Sinteza Advisory was engaged on an exclusivity basis, meaning it alone was the direct link to Plantaže, while the contract does not specify who exactly would perform the work, what references the adviser had, what experience it possessed, which people would be involved, in what manner the advisory services would actually be carried out, or how long they would last,” the respected portal Standard writes.
The Operation to Take Over Plantaže
In the part of the contract describing the compensation Sinteza Advisory, that is, the directors of TradeWin24, were supposed to earn, the intention of the Tradewin24 schemers’ octopus becomes most clearly visible: to quietly take over Plantaže either for themselves or on behalf of a third party.
To recall, AD “13. Jul Plantaže” is a Montenegrin company engaged in the production of wine and brandy, a joint-stock company currently operating within the holding company Agrokombinat 13. jul. It is the largest vineyard and wine-producing company in Montenegro, and one of the largest companies in the country overall. The company is headquartered in Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro.
On the other hand, TradeWin24 is a brokerage house that emerged after the forced liquidation of Sinteza Invest Group, when clients were defrauded and the leading figures behind what is now TradeWin24 had their licenses revoked and were subjected to criminal and misdemeanor proceedings, with some of them also being convicted. Former directors and owners of Sinteza Invest Group then opened a new brokerage firm under the obscure name TradeWin24. From the very beginning of Sinteza Invest Group, the directors behind TradeWin24 also established a subsidiary called Sinteza Advisory, which was initially supposed to have an advisory and consulting role, but remained an empty shell company intended for fictitious extraction of money from related TradeWin24 entities through fake consulting services.
According to company registry extracts, the director and currently sole owner of Sinteza Advisory is Djordje Mandić, who is also a director and one of the owners of TradeWin24. Until 2020, the director of Sinteza Advisory was Srdjan Bošković, also one of the founders of TradeWin24. This duo never enters any business venture without the third founder of TradeWin24, convicted fraudster Miroslav Radaković, and this case was no exception. All three originate from Montenegro, which is of particular importance for the Plantaže Operation they attempted to carry out, unsuccessfully, of course, like everything else they have handled so far.
What did portal Standard report?
In an article by the respected investigative journalist Samir Rastoder, evidence was presented showing that in 2022 the company Sinteza Advisory, owned by the people behind TradeWin24, concluded a financial advisory contract with AD “13. Jul Plantaže,” but that shortly afterward the director of Plantaže realized the contract concealed an attempt by the fraudsters from Sinteza Advisory, in other words Tradewin24, to quietly take over Plantaže. Once they understood who they were dealing with, Plantaže withdrew from the arrangement, after which the director of Plantaže received a dismissal decision with suspicious reasoning. The State Audit Institution of Montenegro has meanwhile filed reports with the Montenegrin prosecution regarding irregularities in the company’s operations, and the Higher State Prosecutor’s Office has opened a case and the investigation is ongoing.
As Standard writes, the financial advisory contract was signed on July 20, 2022. More precisely, the contract involved an obligation to secure new liquid funds for Plantaže, which in essence would only be used to cover prior debts and obligations toward commercial banks in Montenegro. Under the agreement, Sinteza Advisory undertook to find financing to cover Plantaže’s liabilities, which at that moment amounted to 50 million euros.
“In other words, under this agreement Plantaže was supposed to borrow through Sinteza Advisory (Tradewin24) from some unknown lender, using money of unknown origin, and then use those funds to close existing debts, without first verifying who those lenders were and whether they were, at the very least, suspicious persons who could become owners of parcels surrounding Montenegro’s capital. Experts in this field therefore believe that this even opens the question of national security,” Standard writes.
“The contract was signed without the knowledge or decision of the board of directors, which had not even considered this business relationship, and signing this type of contract was not preceded by any tender procedure for selecting the service provider. In addition, and most dangerously of all, Plantaže wanted to engage a legal entity from Serbia, that is, an adviser for such an important matter, without the consent of the Government of Montenegro, which is a direct criminal offense even if a board decision had existed, since the majority owner is the state of Montenegro. Furthermore, Sinteza Advisory was engaged on an exclusivity basis, meaning it alone was the direct link to Plantaže, while the contract does not specify who exactly would perform the work, what references the adviser had, what experience it possessed, which people would be involved, in what manner the advisory services would actually be carried out, or how long they would last,” the respected portal Standard writes.
The Operation to Take Over Plantaže
In the part of the contract describing the compensation Sinteza Advisory, that is, the directors of TradeWin24, were supposed to earn, the intention of the Tradewin24 schemers’ octopus becomes most clearly visible: to quietly take over Plantaže either for themselves or on behalf of a third party.
Under this contract, Plantaže agreed to pay Sinteza Advisory a fee amounting to 1.5% of the net funds raised! That means that, based on the 50 million euros that Plantaže both owed at the time and still owes, Sinteza Advisory was supposed to appropriate 750,000 euros, all within 10 days of the transfer of funds to the company Plantaže.
Another part of the contract that the fraudsters from TradeWin24 tried to push through was the exclusivity clause, which in practice prevented Plantaže from leaving the arrangement, borrowing elsewhere, and repaying those funds if a better engagement could be found. This exclusivity trapped Plantaže into receiving only these “services” for the entire duration of the contract, and in such a framework nobody was expected to even consider, for example, debt restructuring or refinancing through another source. They were not expected to consider it because the operation was designed differently and for a different goal.
And finally, equally dangerous, another disputed part of the contract concerns collateral and what would serve as collateral for those funds. Of course, it was the property of Plantaže. Because if Plantaže had been unable to pay the due installments, and because under the adviser’s exclusivity it would not be allowed to borrow elsewhere, the company would have fallen into the hands of persons close to TradeWin24, or those to whom they would later sell the debt. In that way, for an amount of 50 million euros, they could have obtained assets worth around 560 million euros.
And unfortunately, that was not the end of it. Sinteza Advisory also inserted into the contract a fictitious, fixed, and non-refundable amount of 18,500 euros, to be paid immediately to Sinteza Advisory upon signing the agreement.
As Standard writes: “The said amount refers only to certain expenses allegedly incurred by the adviser, although the contract does not specify what those expenses actually are, nor is there any document where they are explained in more detail. It is merely noted that these costs include copying documentation, paying advisory staff, telephone expenses… and all of it was supposed to be paid by a state-owned company.”
In other words, through this fixed yet fictitious part of the contract, Sinteza Advisory sought to disguise the real intention behind the takeover of Plantaže, so that the entire agreement would appear to be covered by consulting services. In that way, Sinteza Advisory could later wash its hands of the affair by claiming that it had merely acted as an intermediary throughout the operation.
It also remains unclear how the Securities Commission of the Republic of Serbia continues not to react to such schemes by the directors and owners of TradeWin24, even though by law it is required to do so. The Capital Market Law, in particular Articles 150, 156, and 159, clearly provides for a good reputation as a condition for obtaining a license and performing various roles within the governing bodies of brokerage firms, and also provides for situations in which a license may be revoked due to previously unknown circumstances connected to reputation. Yet the Commission appears uninterested in the convictions of TradeWin24’s directors and founders, in the media reporting on their schemes, and in the fact that they are directly and indirectly connected to cases being handled by prosecution authorities in several Balkan countries. We call on the Securities Commission, the police, and the prosecution to urgently address the TradeWin24 group as part of the fight against corruption and financial crime, before the directors of TradeWin24 deceive an even greater number of citizens and further damage the Republic of Serbia.
We thank Mr. Rastoder and the portal Standard for providing the text. Their full investigation can be read at the following link:
STANDARD INVESTIGATION: Why Is the Prosecutor’s Office Not Investigating the Attempt to Defraud the State Through the Plantaže Contract and the Serbian Company, and Who Is Behind Sinteza Advisory?