Slovakia’s Ministry of Defense has purchased two luxury jets from a company that was not authorized to trade with the public sector, the Investigative Center of Ján Kuciak (ICJK) reported.
The ministry bought the jets — one of which had previously belonged to the daughter of former Kazakh autocrat Nursultan Nazarbayev — in December for $48 million. They were purchased through Florida-based United Wings International, according to an investigation by ICJK, which is an OCCRP member center in Slovakia.
According to legal expert Andrej Leontiev, the deal may have violated the law because the firm is not listed in Slovakia’s Register of Public Sector Partners (RPVS), which includes companies and individuals authorized to conduct business with the public sector.
Leontiev told reporters that, if a company is not registered with the RPVS, “the Ministry of Defense has the right to suspend contract fulfillment until this issue is resolved.”
Registration with the RPVS requires full disclosure of a company’s ownership structure. The owners of United Wings International, however, remain unknown.
Reporters were able to identify the Eastern Europe representative for United Wings International at the time of the Slovak defense ministry purchase: a Serbian national named Dražen Mikašinović.
In 2020, OCCRP reported that Mikašinović previously co-owned a company in Montenegro with Mladen Miljanić, whom Italian authorities alleged in 2009 to be a member of the drug trafficking organization known as “Group America.” Miljanić has not been charged or convicted.
Mikašinović was listed on the United Wings website as a representative, and he answered the phone number next to his name. Mikašinović was removed from the website, and his lawyer later told ICJK he had never been an “owner or co-owner” of the company.”
A lawyer for United Wings said the same, adding that Mikašinović had never “held any decision-making role.”Â
Through its lawyer, United Wings said it could not comment on the sale of the two jets to Slovakia’s defense ministry due to U.S. and European regulations requiring confidentiality.
Before being sold to Slovakia, leaked corporate documents showed that one of the jets was associated with the former ruling family of Kazakhstan, ICJK reported.
Until 2017, the plane was registered in the Isle of Man. It was owned by Triumph Aviation Inc. from the tax haven of the British Virgin Islands.Â
Information from a trove of corporate documents leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists — dubbed the “Pandora Papers” — shows that Triumph Aviation was owned by Digara Nazarbayeva, one of the daughters of former Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
The Slovak Ministry of Defense, which finalized the purchase without a competitive bidding process, did not respond to inquiries from reporters about the deal. Questions included whether the purchase was legitimate, even though United Wings had not disclosed its ownership to the RPVS.
According to Leontiev, failure to address the issue could result in legal violations related to transparency and accountability in state contracts, with possible fines for officials who entered into this contract without ensuring proper registration.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that one of the planes was linked to Kazakh businessman Timur Kulibayev, the husband of former President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s daughter Dinara. In fact, the plane was owned by her sister, Dariga.
