Barely 10% of the ownership share in the wine, wellness and conference hotel being built in Sremski Karlovci, Syrmia remains in Hungarian hands although the hotel construction was supported by the Hungarian state with €10 million through HEPA.
As Átlátszó Vajdaság reported previously:
- A five-star hotel is being built in Vojvodina from Hungarian export subsidies.
- HEPA increased the non-repayable subsidy by a further 1 billion Hungarian forints (HUF), raising the total public funding for the hotel project to HUF 3.85 billion.
- Prior to winning the tender, the manager of the Szerémség Ingatlanfejlesztő Kft. Zsanett Oláh, took part in drawing up the tender documents as a contractual advisor of HEPA.
- Tthe Serbian Government has classified the investment in Sremski Karlovci as a significant project.
However, despite the Hungarian State`s substantial support
the Hungarian investor`s portfolio is no longer boosted by the company`s Serbian subsidiary.
The new co-owner of the Serbian subsidiary is Avenija-Galens Invest d.o.o. Novi Sad, which holds 49.99% of the shares. The founding company, Szerémség Ingatlanfejlesztő Kft., has retained a majority stake of 50.01%. However, similar changes have also taken place in the Hungarian parent company, with the Novi Sad-based company acquiring an 80% stake in Szerémség Ingatlanfejlesztő Kft. – thus it can be concluded that
Avenija-Galens Invest holds an 89.99% stake in the investment, which was funded by Hungarian public money.
The new investor, Galens Invest d.o.o., is the qualified majority owner of the Naša Banka, a bank operating in Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In its response to our inquiry, HEPA found nothing amiss in the fact that the company it supports has, in the meantime, come into a majority ownership of a foreign entity.
The Serbian Government has also supported the implementation of the project since the change of ownership. According to Nova Ekonomija,
the Serbian Ministry of Economy is providing €5.87 million in incentives to cover the cost of building and furnishing the hotel.
The subsidy will be paid in three instalments and the first one was already received by the beneficiary in 2025.
According to Átlátszó Vajdaság, the Serbian government amended a regulation to enable the access of the hotel in Sremski Karlovci to these funds. According to the tender documents, the total costs of the project amount to €30 million, which exceeds previous estimations by 50 percent.
The Serbian Building Contractor Gobbled Up the Project
According to the information in the Hungarian Company Register, the data of Szerémség Ingatlanfejlesztő Kft.’s members were amended on 7 August 2024. The former co-owner, HO-ME 2000 Vagyonkezelő Kft., has completely withdrawn from the hotel project, transferring its share to Avenija-Galens Invest d.o.o. in Novi Sad.
Presumptively, the only Hungarian co-owner, László Wolf, also transferred part of his share, because the level of the new shareholder`s voting rights is now a qualified majority (at least 75%). Previously, HO-ME 2000 held a simple majority (50% + 1%).
According to Serbian public company data, Avenija-Galens Invest d.o.o. has acquired an 80% stake in the Hungarian company,
valued at 181,941,000 Serbian dinars (approximately €1.55 million).
These changes were only registered with the Serbian project company in October 2024. Avenija-Galens Invest d.o.o. entered the ownership structure of Szeremsegi Ingatlanfejleszto d.o.o. through a capital increase.
The decision adopted in this regard refers to the loan agreement dated 16 December 2022 and Section 146 of the Law on Business Associations. According to this, a capital increase can be achieved either by a new payment from a new member joining the company, or by converting claims against the company into share capital (conversion).
The investor from Novi Sad registered €0.5 million as new membership and €2.5 million by converting a previous loan into capital. Galens thus has
a total capital share of 351,024,600 dinars (approximately €3 million) in the project company in Sremski Karlovci.
Although Galens holds only a minority stake in the Serbian project company, its ownership is supplemented by its share in the Hungarian parent company, providing it almost 90% majority influence.
The Threads Lead to Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Galens first appeared as a contractor on the permit issued to Szeremsegi Ingatlanfejleszto d.o.o. as a building contractor, in September 2022, for the start of construction work on the hotel. The company`s second and final mention was in March 2023, when the same permit was amended and AB Pro-Ing d.o.o. Novi Sad officially became the building contractor.
There have been no publicly available updates on the building permits site since April 2023, when the planned size of the hotel was reduced. Although we can see that the foundation works were finished in June 2024 and the structure of the building was completed in March 2025, the authorities have not yet announced their approval of these submissions.
While the details of the 2022 agreement between Szeremsegi Ingatlanfejleszto d.o.o. and Avenija-Galens Invest d.o.o. remain unclear, it is now certain that
AB Pro-Ing d.o.o. and Galens Invest d.o.o. Novi Sad are part of the same interest group.
This is because the founder of the contractor, G – Inženjering Zvornik d.o.o., together with Galens d.o.o. and a third party, GI Finance d.o.o. Zvornik, acquired a 99.6% stake in Naša Banka in Banja Luka in 2023.
This is the bank whose legal predecessor, Pavlović Banka, was suspected of issuing a fictitious loan certificate in 2007 to Milorad Dodik, the former president of the Bosnian Serb entity, to justify the purchase of a €750,000 villa in Belgrade. The Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been conducting proceedings in the case since 2016.
According to Nova, the Galens Group became the most dynamically developing construction company owing to the fact that
it was granted exceptionally favorable conditions for building in Novi Sad by tailoring the city`s General Development Plant to the company`s needs.
For instance, it was permitted to add four to eight floors to apartment buildings, thereby increasing its initial investment by several million euros.
Galens already had interests in Syrmia prior to the construction of the hotel in Sremski Karlovci. In 2020, VOICE reported that Sanja Petrić, one of the actual co-owners of Galens Invest d.o.o., had purchased over two hundred plots of land on Mt. Fruška Gora. Another article in 2022 reported that Frug d.o.o., a company linked to the group, had bought the former Navip winery, along with its entire infrastructure and 120 hectares of land, for a fraction of the market price. This gave the winery, founded in 2019, a significant boost.
There is a Loophole in the Call for Proposals: HEPA Cannot Guarantee For the Hungarian State That Its Investment Will Pay Off its Investment
As stated by the Hungarian Export Development Agency Nonprofit Ltd. (HEPA), which administers the support provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the long-term impact of the Western Balkans Investment Support scheme – beyond promoting the economic development of the Balkan region – aims to
“contribute to the growth of income repatriated from the profits of domestic companies abroad, and thus to national income.”
In the call for applications, which sets out the conditions for applying for support, HEPA emphasized that
- It intends to support projects implemented in Serbia that are aimed at establishing a new subsidiary engaged in economic activity in the target country, in such a way that the beneficiary has a majority ownership stake and decisive management rights.
- The basic intensity of the support is 50% in the case of regional investment support.
- A six-month extension of the implementation deadline is possible with a one-year extension of the maintenance period, and a total of two extensions are possible, with a final deadline of December 31, 2025.
We asked HEPA by email whether the fact that the beneficiary, Szerémség Ingatlanfejlesztő Kft., has since come under majority foreign ownership would have any consequences for the implementation of the project, and if so, what those consequences would be.
In its response, HEPA referred to Article 1(5)(a) of the Regulation on the functioning of the European Union, declaring it compatible with the internal market, and stated that their call for tenders:
“does not exclude companies with foreign ownership, but with their registered office, permanent establishment or branch in Hungary, from the circle of applicants.”
The cited EU regulation actually guarantees non-discrimination, as the freedom of the EU internal market requires foreign ownership not to be a reason for exclusion from the award of state aid.
However, HEPA’s application does not guarantee that profits realized abroad as a result of the aid will actually increase Hungarian national income. There is a contradiction between the theoretical objective and its practical implementation, meaning that, in the case of the hotel in Sremski Karlovci,
the long-term objective of the subsidy will not be achieved, as the Serbian partner is expected to take away almost 90% of the profits.
We emailed Szerémség Ingatlanfejlesztő Kft. as well as Westbay Kft., as the stakeholder of the former owner of HO-ME 2000 Vagyonkezelő Kft., to ask how much they had invested in the project prior to the change in ownership. Neither of them responded.
Given that, prior to Galens’ entry, the registered capital of the Hungarian and Serbian companies did not even reach the total amount of the subsidy, it can be assumed that the original owners did not invest significantly in the project. Since the subsidy drawn down was insufficient to cover the contractor’s costs for work already carried out – not to mention the equipment needed to continue the building – the contractor converted its claim into ownership rights.
Based on the Serbian tender, the current value of the project has been set at €29.38 million. With HEPA’s grant of €10 million, the Hungarian initiator should hold at least a 30% share. However, the grant itself is worthless without an investor to finance the required contribution. This devalues the subsidy amount, which is why it is possible that if
HEPA’s €10 million subsidy is valued at only 10.01% in a project worth nearly €30 million, it is worth only €3 million.
Moreover, there is a small provision, namely that the project completion period was prolonged at least once – from 30 November 2025 to 31 July 2026, – which is a minor detail in comparison with the above mentioned, but in the case of the hotel in Sremski Karlovci, it did not include the prolongation of the maintenance period originally set to 5 years.
Lex Paragraf Hotel Sremski Karlovci
In 2025, the Serbian government updated the decree regulation outlining the criteria for awarding subsidies to encourage investment in the accommodation service sector on two occasions. The latest amendment was made in August last year, five months after the previous change, and contained only one modification:
Sremski Karlovci in Syrmia was added to the list of climatic locations eligible for subsidies.
This category covers geographical areas with special climatic conditions that have healing, recreational or health-preserving effects, and which are, therefore, worthy of support from the Republic of Serbia.
In October 2025, Szeremsegi Ingatlanfejleszto d.o.o. submitted its application to the Serbian Development Agency. On 1 December last year, the Economic Development Council decided to grant the hotel €5.87 million in funding, and the contract was signed on 5 December.
Under the terms of the grant, the new management of Szeremsegi Ingatlanfejleszto d.o.o. undertook to:
- complete the project by the end of 2026;
- invest no less than €29.38 million, at least 25% of which would be their own contribution;
- employ at least 30 new full-time, permanent employees by the end of 2026;
- spend at least €1,110 gross per person on the average monthly salary of the 30 new employees for two years;
- salaries will be at least 20% higher than the minimum wage;
- not reduce the number of permanent employees below 31 for at least five years;
- provide opportunities for high school and university students to gain practical experience at the hotel.
The subsidy payment schedule originally consisted of two installments, with the larger portion to be disbursed by the Serbian government in 2027. However, at the beneficiary’s request, the contract was amended before the end of the year to divide the schedule into three parts. The first installment of €202,500.02 (3.44%) was received by the beneficiary in 2025. The investor will receive 87.96% of the total amount in 2026, and the remaining 8.59% in 2027.
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Text: Virág Gyurkovics
Data visualization: Andrea Dancsó
Company data provided by Opten.
Featured image: The Hotel in Sremski Karlovci on January 30, 2026. Source: Átlátszó Vajdaság