Guiltys are jeopardising businesses and citizens

Illegally borrowed money or how they are known by the term “fede” not rarely have they become the cause of fostering conflicts among different individuals, but also the cause for closing businesses, business community representatives and financial experts say.

According to Kosovo Police data, during the past year alone, 25 cases as presets according to the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kosovo have been initiated in the first quarter of this year.

Agim Sahin, from the Kosovo Business Alliance, considers this phenomenon to be more pronounced, but who, according to him, persons involved in this phenomenon are threatened in case of reporting cases in law organs. It requires competent organs not to be passive about these illegal activities.

This phenomenon has entered several layers of society that the people involved have become immune. We think this is the most serious phenomenon of Kosovo society, and this affects the informal economy, to businesses that in the absence of legal means they try to take money illegally. But these are so expensive that there were times that they came up to the” assassinations.

Former Kosovo Central Bank Governor Hashim Rexhepi emphasises for Radio Free Europe that the banking sector should create facilities for borrowing, specifically for initial businesses, as according to him, these businesses have problems in securing financial means.

“Financial System should be more effective in understanding the access of businesses to finance because it's a problem especially with initial businesses that have trouble access to finance and find alternative resources, from sources that are culinary” Rexhepi points out.

The phenomen of file money is having implications on general society, Sahin says, adding that individuals or certain groups who are borrowing money with higher interest in the event of no timely lending are in return taking business, property or property that is far higher than the obligation of the verbal agreement.

These people are directly and indirectly connected to even more businesses. But there have been times when they were even associated with officials of state institutions. ”

“Madje, years ago when hundreds of citizens from Kosovo illegally went to Western countries, we have information that a large number who have abandoned the country have been endangered by various files that have been threatened with life of”, Sahin says.

Such actions are punished according to the Republic of Kosovo's Criminal Code.

According to this code, anyone who either accepts or contracts a substantial amount of property in exchange for service to the other person is fined and imprisoned for 5 to 12 years, depending on the value of financial means loss or the realisation of property.