Word: abdication
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Agrokomerc, like most industrial enterprises in Yugoslavia, was in effect the personal fiefdom of the local Communist Party chief. In this case the boss was Fikret Abdic, 48, one of the most influential figures in the northwestern republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the firm's chief executive since 1967. Stout and graying, Abdic ruled Agrokomerc in imperial style, often issuing $ directives from a villa on the Adriatic coast, to which he commuted, attended by secretaries and bodyguards, in a customized...
Under the hard-driving Abdic, Agrokomerc grew from a tiny milk-processing plant to a conglomerate with 13,500 employees, 1985 sales of $183 million, and products ranging from chicken parts to frozen dough. The rapid expansion transformed the firm's hometown, Velika Kladusa, from an impoverished peasant village to a prosperous community of whitewashed brick homes. But it turned out that Abdic had financed much of the expansion through a type of fraud that has become common in Yugoslavia's byzantine financial system...