Serbia court to rule on late Tito’s assets
Print Edition
For 35 years since the death of former Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito, tens of thousands of the extravagant strongman’s belongings have been the subject of legal wrangling.
This month a Serbian court is finally expected to rule on the inheritance of his huge and eclectic range of possessions, from hunting rifles and paintings to marshal uniforms and even stones from the moon — a gift from US President Richard Nixon.
During his time at the helm of Yugoslavia from the end of the World War II until his death in 1980, Tito and his wife Jovanka enjoyed a lifestyle that impressed even Hollywood star Richard Burton, who visited the pair in 1971.
“They live in remarkable luxury unmatched by anything else I’ve seen and I can well believe Princess Margaret who says the whole business makes Buck House look pretty middle-class,” Burton wrote in his diaries, referring to Britain’s Buckingham Palace.
But today the extent of Tito’s assets to be divided up by the court remains unclear, even to relatives who await news of their inheritance: his son Misha, the four children of his late son Zarko and two of the late Jovanka’s sisters.
“There is no written document in which the court establishes what is to be inherited,” said Svetlana Broz, one of Zarko’s daughters.
“We do not know what that will be until we receive the ruling,” she said.
When Tito died, his possessions were estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars.
In 1985 a law declared that all of his belongings were state property — a ruling that was later annulled after it was challenged by Jovanka, who died in 2013.
But a clear division between what Tito owned privately and what he used as the country’s top official was never made.
Proceedings were slowed down by the 1990s Balkan wars, and some of Tito’s property went to countries that emerged after Yugoslavia fell apart. His family also alleges widespread theft in the intervening years.
“Fabulously expensive watches, cars, weapons and other treasure disappeared,” Jovanka’s lawyer Toma Fila wrote in his memoirs.
Tito is admired for driving out Nazi German occupying forces in World War II with his partisan fighters, standing up to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and founding the Non-Aligned Movement.
He made Yugoslavia one of the most prosperous communist countries, but critics denounce his personality cult and lavish lifestyle.
Some 70,000 belongings of his are now stored in depots at Belgrade’s Museum of Yugoslav History, also home to Tito and Jovanka’s mausoleum.
(AFP)
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