Wednesday, August 15, 2012

More Arrests Predicted In Serbia's Agrobanka Case :: Balkan Insight

?We do not want to speak about names or announce who will be arrested but I can assure you that the prosecution will investigate each and every person involved in approving illegal loans between 2006 and 2010,? the prosecutor for organized crime, Mirko Radisavcevic, said.

Serbia's Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime launched an investigation on August 8 when several officials of Agrobanka and two private companies suspected of wrongdoing were arrested in a joint action of the Interior Ministry and the Prosecutor's Office.

"So far the investigation has shown that Agrobanka granted a large number of loans to mutually networked legal entities, and without appropriate guarantees, which is contrary to the Law on Banks, the regulations of the National Bank of Serbia and the bank's own acts," a statement from the Prosecutor?s Office said.

"Because of that, the bank was unable to collect loan repayments exceeding 200 million euro," Radisavljevic explained.

According to the Belgrade daily newspaper Press, the former chief of the National Bank, Dejan Soskic, may also be investigated in the case, since the National Bank "ignored a police request" submitted one year ago, asking to see a report on the controls of Agrobanka's business.

Although Soskic recently said that he never received any police requests related to Agrobanka - "former members of the National Bank Council are saying that only Soskic and his vice-governor in charge of control of banks, Mira Eric, could have known about it", the daily newspaper said.

The new National Bank Governor, Jorgovaka Tabakovic, said in a statement that she would "investigate whether the central bank refused to submit the report to the police while Dejan Soskic was at its helm".

?The authorities will determine whether there were oversights at the central bank,? she noted.

Miroslav Prokopijevic, a Belgrade economist, however, believes that the former bank governor is not a crucial person in the investigation, but that the overall responsibility of the central bank should be determined.

?Soskic is being targeted by the media since he doesn?t have a protection of any of the political parties, since he is not a member of them. It is much harder to question some former ministers who are responsible and who come from the [former ruling] Democratic Party,? Prokopijevic said.

?Someone has to be responsible, since small fish could not get loans of a dozens of milions of euro and not having a strong political background,? he added.

In May, the National Bank revoked Agrobanka's license when it was discovered the bank was 300 million euro in the red.

The bank's obligations and deposits were taken over by Nova Agrobanka, founded by the government of Serbia.

The new government has pledged to get to the bottom of the Agrobanka affair.

You can read more about?the troubled bank's businesses in Balkan Insight's??New? Agrobanka Leaves Old Shareholders Fuming.

Source: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/more-arrests-to-follow-in-agrobanka-case

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