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Lawful Theft (intersting find )
Feral Tribune ^ | February 10, 2001

Posted on 11/05/2001 6:31:55 AM PST by FireWall

Lawful Theft

by M.G.

Feral Tribune, Split, Croatia, February 10, 2001

Borut Ozura, the president of the Ljubljanska Bank in restructuring, believes that Croats would accept every nonsense as long as it has something to do with Serbs. To the question whether it was customary to resolve a problem of a bank with a constitutional law (in an interview to Jutarnji List) he says the following: "With that law Slovenia defended her interests against account holders from Serbia". He obviously believes that to cheat Serbs, especially those from Serbia, is completely legal and that everyone in Croatia would agree and support that. Furthermore, after such an answer no one would dare ask how come that that "anti-Serb" law also strongly affected the account holders from Croatia?

And really, that constitutional law, with only two articles, is at the same time anti-Serb, anti-Croat, anti-Bosniak, anti-Macedonian, and anti-Albanian...; briefly, it is against all those individuals who during the former Yugoslavia held their savings in Ljubljanska Bank, and were not Slovenians from Slovenia. Actually, this is nothing but a banal swindle which, against better customs, but totally in agreement with customary Balkan practice, was carried out in the Slovenian Parliament. The Parliament founded the New Ljubljanska Bank, and transferred all the business deals, all the property, and all the employees of the old Ljubljanska Bank to the "new" company, while the "old" Ljubljanska Bank was left with all the debts that it cannot pay back as it lacks both money and property. The law that prescribes that has the force of the constitution and therefore cannot be challenged in the Constitutional or any other court.

Probably only the Ljubljanska Bank knows how much money from other parts of the former Yugoslavia was stolen in that manner. The management of the bank has in the past claimed that half of all of its business originated from outside Slovenia. Ozura now claims that 132,000 of Croat account holders who did not transfer their accounts to Croatian banks are owed $155 million, $172.5 million including interest. That means that the Ljubljanska Bank has applied the annual interest rate of 0.5 percent for the last ten years on the accounts that it has frozen by force.

Recently, Croatian account holders (as well as the state, which claims $255 million from the Ljubljanska Bank, due to the money that has been transferred to the public debt) have received good news that the senior Slovenian officials have finally admitted that they owe anything. Until recently they persistently claimed that that money had been spent on credits to Croatian companies, so that Croats have nothing to ask for. (It is true that the Ljubljanska Bank gave about $85 million of credit in Croatia, while everything else was taken in a van to Ljubljana).

However, Borut Ozura now brings up that old empty story, claiming that they would pay money back to their customers if only the Croatian companies paid back the money they owe to the Ljubljanska Bank. But in Slovenia, the Ljubljanska Bank failed to recover all of the debts it was owed by the local companies while the Yugoslav market still existed and yet that did not prevent it from fulfilling its obligations towards individual account holders in Slovenia.

Why is Ozura again falling back on "arguments" that were supposed to had become obsolete? Because he is still defending the right of the Ljubljanska bank to steal the money deposited by its customers from other states formed after the break up of the former Yugoslavia. Slovenians got their money, and protected themselves from all the other "Serbs" by a constitutional law. However, they had to admit that sooner or later they would have to pay that money back. When? No one knows!


Translated on June 20, 2001


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS:
I'ts almost a year old, but this could stir up some good discussions. You should follow up and dig into the other articles on this site, very interesting.
1 posted on 11/05/2001 6:31:55 AM PST by FireWall
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To: Pericles; vooch; bluester; DTA; Hoplite; wonders; joan; Honorary Serb; *balkans
Sorry for the small bump list, I hate typing :^)
2 posted on 11/05/2001 6:35:21 AM PST by FireWall
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To: FireWall; branicap
I think branicap posted this article last summer.
3 posted on 11/05/2001 8:22:26 AM PST by joan
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To: joan
Alrighty then, I guess I'm a little behind on the surifng...
4 posted on 11/05/2001 9:44:27 AM PST by FireWall
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To: FireWall
this reads like an ad for foreign investing in "the statelet on the sunny side of the alps". Nothing new for those who know Slovenian business practices.

Those crooks praise themselves on ingenuity in stealing be it Johnny Cash music, copyrighting generic turkish name "ajvar" ( balkan vegetable spread) or selling weapons in contravention of U.N. embargo.

When Slovenes finally return the stolen real estate to Austrian, Italian owners( as well as Serbian Royal Family) they will finally excell in what they do the best - the house servants.

5 posted on 11/05/2001 10:48:23 AM PST by DTA
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To: FireWall
Read here
6 posted on 11/05/2001 1:25:43 PM PST by joan
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To: FireWall; joan; DTA
Hello everybody!Long time no see!Technical problems with AOL!Never mind.

FW don`t worry,it`s good to remind some people about previous posts.It doesn`t diminish the walue of the post ,truth is always precious!

Slovenia ,within Yugoslavia,was involved in dirty trics,monopoly,plagiarism,outright theft and many unethical business policies for decades!They had their men in the top echelons of Yugo government(under Tito)and they were very succesfull in blocking any attempt of reform.The moment business practices had begun to change,Slovenia became "freedom&democracy fighter" and anounced seccession!But,they first stole a couple of hundred milions of Deutche Marks from other Yugoslav banks stashed them in Austria and Switzerland!Just in case....

DTA the only nationalised property that Slovenia will return will be American property!State Department had blackmailed Slovenia 3 months ago,telling them that they have to return property of American citizens(400+) if they want to apply for NATO!

Yugoslav Royal Family,very unlikely!

7 posted on 11/11/2001 10:15:50 PM PST by branicap
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