PAID BY THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT: Here Is the German Adviser Who Has Been Counseling Vučić on Serbia’s Most Sensitive Issues for 13 Years!

Jörg Heskens has been advising Aleksandar Vučić for 13 years, while being paid by the German government, raising a series of constitutional, legal, political, and security-related questions. BIRN and Der Spiegel reveal details of his engagement from 2020 to the present day – including secret meetings and plans regarding the Jadar project before and after its suspension, as well as the financial support Germany allocated to mining projects during the height of student protests.

“I call him ‘my German,’ and he calls me ‘my wild Serb.’ That’s how we exchange compliments,” Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said in February 2023 during the opening of a factory owned by the German company Continental in Novi Sad, describing his relationship with Jörg Heskens, his adviser on German investments.

Heskens has indeed been something of Vučić’s shadow, as he is one of the president’s longest-serving associates, continuously advising him since September 2013.

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The German adviser worked with Vučić while he served as Serbia’s Minister of Defense and Deputy Prime Minister, and later during his tenure as Prime Minister. After the 2017 presidential election, Heskens moved with Vučić to the Presidential Office at Andrićev Venac, where he remains today.

An investigation conducted by BIRN and the German magazine Der Spiegel, based on documentation that BIRN obtained over a six-month period from German institutions through freedom-of-information requests, sheds light on Heskens’ activities from 2020 onward. According to the investigation, Serbia under Aleksandar Vučić has become a service-oriented economy for German industry, while German officials have viewed Vučić as a figure with whom business arrangements could be negotiated directly.

“In this role, he (Heskens) contributes significantly to the direct representation of German economic interests before Vučić,” states a preparatory document regarding Heskens’ engagement from June 2020, reviewed by BIRN and Der Spiegel.

The full article is available on BIRN.