Ex-finance minister "to set up consulting firm"

Ex-finance minister "to set up consulting firm"

BELGRADE -- Former Finance Minister Lazar Krstić will help prepare a budget review, and then set up his own consulting firm with his closest associates, reports a daily.

Krstić will "certainly stay in Belgrade and not look for engagement abroad, as has been speculated," the Blic newspaper said. Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić said on Monday that after stepping down, Krstić had become his "adviser.".

There has been speculation that Krstić would he hired by Deutsche Bank, and even the World Bank and the IMF were mentioned. Krstić, however, the rejected this in informal contacts, saying the claims were incorrect.

People close to Krstić claim that his departure from the government was "not staged" and that he was "announcing for months" his intention to resign. "It's just that he realized now that two and two will not equal four in the (budget) revision," an anonymous source has been quoted as saying.

The newspaper quoted more unnamed sources, this time from the government, who "confirmed that disagreements between Krstić and Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić are not new." According to them, this was evident in the statements both made over the past several months concerning the possible pension cuts.

Another hint was "the fact that Krstić repeatedly moved the deadline for the revised budget." The government sources, however, said they do not believe it was a coincidence that Krstić resigned precisely on the day when the government adopted its contentious draft Labor Law, thus "partly diverting the public attention from this bill."

"I think both Krstić and Vučić profited. Krstić's biography will say he served as finance minister...