Serbia to pay 130m euros in savings debt -- not a cent for Kosovars

As B92, released with the proposal of amendments, the deadline continues for making the decision on paying debts based on the domestic savings of citizens prior to the collapse of Jugislavia.

Serbian Finance Minister Sinisa Mali, according to this source, has said that amendments and fulfillments of the Law adopted will be made with this law so that Serbia will fulfil its obligations in accordance with the European Court of Human Rights's act regarding Rusty Alisic and others from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (of North Macedonia).

With these changes continue the deadline for making the decision by the Directorate for Public Debt on request, the number of half-year installments between ten and eight are reduced, and the start of payment is postponed for six months.

As the “Afat is highlighted, due to the lack of savings to provide documentation from competent institutions in the former republic by 23 June this year and to gain the right to compensate for the old camel savings”, the minister has clarified.

According to him, Serbia will be forced to pay around 130m euros on behalf of camel savings, and has clarified there are about 9,300 requirements filed.

Amazingly, there is no mention of temporary savings from Kosovo, whose number is large, while the amount of their savings exceeded several hundred million euros, recalls Koha.net.

There has been no information whether Kosovo authorities have argued with arguments about robbing Kosovo's bank assets from Serbia during the years of occupation.

“There are different variants regarding the amount of tools saved by Kosovars in these banks, for which no Kosovo government has taken any concrete steps to return, or even if any symbolic step has been taken in the past, Kosovars and the wider public has not even the smallest information. Various sums have been mentioned through qualores and individuals for unturned tools”, Flamur Keqa, an expert on the case, wrote several years ago.

With information available (that may even be incomplete), Kosovars' savings at these minimum banks have been at a total of 455 million deutschmarks. That amount is the cut of the 3111.1997 date and concerns two banks operating at the time in Kosovo. The first bank was the US headquarters in Mitrovica, where there has been a state of savings of 292m deutschmarks. Within these savings are savings in the former Ljubljana Bank, later Bank Kreday. The other bank was the Bank of Kosovo, which was founded with the means of the Kosovo economy and the amount of savings in the bank on the date 31.11.1997 was 163 million marks. The estimated interest in many 69 million marks should be added. As a result, the total amount amounts to 524 million marks. This is only about camel savings, but not the ones in the Dinaric currency or any other evental currency”, Keqa wrote.