Ante Bilic (born 1955) is a retired Kresimirian steelworks executive who served as Works Director of Vokamet from the 1993 privatisation until 2001. He was the first senior local manager installed after Maj Holdings bought the former Vokavovic Combine, and briefly the Vjetrusa candidate for Mayor of Cetingrad in the chaotic late-1998 special election that followed the Steelworks Incident.
Works Director (1993–2001)
Bilic had been a shift superintendent under the state Combine. Maj Holdings retained him at privatisation as a familiar face for the yard while routing ownership north-east to Polograd. Alongside Mayor Said Klopje, Bilic implemented the production push that tripled output between 1993 and 1998. Internal safety memos later cited in The State v. Maj Holdings carried his countersignature on deferred valve replacements at Blast Furnace No. 4.
He was not criminally charged. After the disaster he remained Works Director through the first years of Independent Mayor Igor Cvetkov, then left the company in 2001.
1998 mayoral candidacy
When Klopje resigned, Bran Maj pressed Vjetrusa to run Bilic — an executive already hated in the Foundry District as Klopje’s plant counterpart. District VIII strongman Misko Maretic judged the ticket radioactive and quietly shifted machine support to Igor Cvetkov. Bilic’s official campaign collapsed into single digits; he did not seek office again.
Later life
Bilic retired to a lakeside suburb above the pollution line. He occasionally appears in Vjetrusa veterans’ circulars defending “industrial realism,” but holds no role at Vokamet under Managing Director Dragan Huljak.