€826,809 for Romanian lawyers. Golob's Gen-I won't say what for.

What did Gen-I pay Romanian lawyers €826,809 for? The public data has no answer.

In 2024 and 2025, the Gen-I group paid the Romanian law firm D&B David și Baias a total of €826,809. That makes it the largest single recipient on the list of the group's legal costs obtained by the portal Preiskovalno.si, and roughly 27 percent of the €3,070,319.91 recorded between 2022 and 2025. According to the portal, the records mostly contain only general descriptions of legal advice and representation and do not reveal specific cases. Who ordered the services and who approved the invoices is not known.

The size of the payments and the undisclosed purpose prove nothing unlawful on their own. The story only makes sense if read in three categories: what is documented, what is a statement or an indication, and what is merely a question still waiting for evidence.

What is documented

According to the portal, D&B received €516,486 in 2024 and €310,323 in 2025. In 2022 and 2023 it received nothing. The payments thus appeared overnight, and in 2024 they made up more than half of the group's total legal costs. Those costs grew year after year:

- 2022: €396,986 - 2023: €684,899 - 2024: €977,466 - 2025: €1,010,969

In 2025 they were roughly 2.55 times as high as in 2022.

The portal describes the firm as Romanian and linked to PwC Romania. It was founded in 2002 by professors Sorin David and Flavius Baias, and it deals with commercial law, takeovers, competition, taxes and banking. It also advises in the fields of energy, renewable sources and electricity storage, which could fit Gen-I's needs. The portal wrote that it could not find out which services were ordered and carried out. In the published sources, Gen-I has not explained what the firm did for this money either.

In second place is the Austrian firm Wolf Theiss with around €695,000, split between three legal entities. The lawyer Stojan Zdolšek, who is also Golob's defence counsel, received €229,675. The Slovenian firm Rojs, Peljhan, Prelesnik & partnerji, where Robert Prelesnik, husband of the director of the Slovenian Press Agency (STA) Mojca Prelesnik, is a partner, received €209,921.

Where Golob comes in

Golob led Gen-I from 2006 until November 2021. His mandate then expired, and the owners failed to agree on a new management board, so a court later appointed the leadership on a temporary basis. At the time of both payments he was prime minister and not a member of the Gen-I board. There is no public proof that he ordered or approved the payments. None of the sources reviewed names him as the person who approved them.

What is a statement or an indication, not proof

The link to Golob is built from claims and continuity of personnel. The portal Zanima.me cites a statement by Golob's former justice minister Dominika Švarc Pipan from published recordings:

“The director of Gen-I rarely makes any decision without his approval. He is still running Gen-I in the background. The director is just a formality there.” (translated)

“Him” means Golob. This is one person's assessment, not proof, and the sources contain no response from Golob to it.

Maks Helbl, who has led Gen-I since February 2023, was described in Forbes Slovenija, according to Domovina, as a cadre of the former prime minister. His wife Barbara Kolenko Helbl was appointed secretary-general of Golob's government in June 2022. Domovina adds that this alone does not prove Golob's influence on the company's business decisions.

Preiskovalno.si also points out that D&B's clients include the bank Raiffeisen, where Golob had an account that he claimed in 2022 was not his. The portal does not prove a link between these payments and that account. A shared bank and a shared firm mean nothing in themselves.

What is merely a question

Romania already featured in the Slovenian media at the end of September because of another story. The Romanian anti-corruption prosecutor's office is reportedly investigating Gregor Hudohmet, director of Gen-I Sonce, who allegedly demanded a bribe of €450,000 plus VAT on a battery storage project in the town of Gheorgheni. A court in Bucharest has reportedly ordered 30 days of detention for him. The suspect is presumed innocent.

Golob wrote on Facebook that he had invited Hudohmet to his wedding and would not distance himself from him, while adding:

“But I know one thing: suspicion is not guilt yet.” (translated)

The published sources show no link between that case and the payments to D&B. The timeline does not support one: Gen-I Sonce signed the contract for building the storage facility in Gheorgheni with the Romanian company Waldevar Energy in August 2026, while the payments to D&B are recorded only up to the end of 2025. When Hudohmet was arrested, Gen-I said it has zero tolerance for corruption and all unlawful conduct. Whether D&B took part in any of the group's Romanian projects cannot be seen from the public data.

If it turned out that there were no proportionate legal services behind the invoices, or that the money did not end up where it was supposed to, that would raise questions of accounting, taxes and perhaps something worse. This is merely a hypothesis, which must be checked by someone with access to the contracts. There is no evidence for any of these possibilities.

What Gen-I must explain

Questions that the public data does not answer:

- Which specific services does the €826,809 cover? - How many invoices were issued, and which group companies paid them? - Who signed the contract, and who approved the invoices? - Which projects, proceedings or transactions do they relate to? - Which D&B lawyers did the work? - Did the firm take part in the project in Gheorgheni? - Can Gen-I publish the contracts or anonymised specifications of the services performed?

Who runs Gen-I today

On the last day of August 2026, the supervisory board of Gen energija dismissed its director general Nada Drobne Popović and appointed former minister Andrej Vizjak in her place. On the same day, Jure Soklič replaced Maks Helbl as chair of the Gen-I board. Vizjak listed sorting out relations between Gen energija and Gen-I among his priorities.

Deputy Prime Minister Jernej Vrtovec wrote on the network X on 27 September:

“GEN-I was hijacked by Robert Golob for more than a decade.” (translated)

Vrtovec is a minister in the government that succeeded Golob's, and he is demanding an independent audit of Gen-I's operations. The sources reviewed contain no response from Golob to this statement. According to Moja Dolenjska, the new board has ordered investigations into the company's deals.

Why this matters now

On Sunday, 11 October, voters will decide in a referendum, among other things, on an amendment to the law on parliamentary inquiry, which the National Assembly (DZ) adopted in May 2026. Supporters of the amendment cite Gen-I as an example.