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Sacirbey Denies Wrongdoing in Postwar Chaos
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 6, 2001; Page A16
SARAJEVO, Bosnia -- Financial police in Bosnia have leveled detailed
accusations of economic fraud against the man who was the government's spokesman
to the world during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. Muhamed Sacirbey, the former U.N. ambassador and foreign minister, is at the
center of an investigation in which Bosnian auditors looked at the books of the
country's U.N. mission in New York and concluded that $610,982 in government
funds had disappeared last year, officials here said. The auditors also concluded that "fictitious bookkeeping" was used to hide
what happened so that Sacirbey could try to pay it back. In a telephone interview, Sacirbey denied wrongdoing, saying that because of
the difficulties of governing in postwar chaos, money was sometimes moved
without full authorization but was always spent on official Bosnian government
business. "Nowhere did I profit personally," he said. Sacirbey, who holds both U.S. and Bosnian citizenship, was a frequent
presence on American television news during the war, speaking eloquently of the
suffering of Bosnian Muslims at the hands of Serb paramilitary forces and
helping to raise foreign donations. He was replaced as U.N. ambassador in
December after a change of government in Bosnia, and now works for ICN
Pharmaceuticals Inc. in New York. Authorities in Bosnia have not accepted his explanations. The financial
police concluded that some of the missing funds were transferred to Sacirbey's
personal bank account at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York. When confronted, he
provided a "confused and contradictory" explanation of the transfers, according
to a copy of the audit. The diverted funds included more than $90,000 meant to help improve the
capability of Bosnian Muslim soldiers through a U.S.-administered program known
as "Train and Equip," according to the audit. The funds -- which Sacirbey says
did not come from foreign donors -- were deposited in Sacirbey's personal
account and later withdrawn as cash, it states. "In the first moment, I did not believe it was true," Zlatko Lagumdzija,
Bosnia's current foreign minister and, like Sacirbey, a Muslim, said in an
interview about the fraud allegations. But after reviewing the audit, "the
evidence was so obvious," he said, and now "we are waiting for the prosecutor to
do his job." Sacirbey said the allegations were the government's revenge for his public
criticism of its policies. He denied that any funds were deposited into his own
account, and said he resented "being held accountable to a system I was not
accountable to when I was asked to do this job." Sacirbey said that sometimes he paid bills that the Foreign Ministry had
insincerely promised to pay, and that he also was sometimes ordered to spend
money "in a convoluted way" to circumvent opposition from the ethnic Croat and
Serb officials who shared authority in Bosnia's multi-ethnic government. In Bosnia, the allegations swirling around Sacirbey have impugned the
reputation of the Party for Democratic Action, which controlled the
Muslim-dominated territory of this ethnically divided country and many of its
embassies from 1992 until the party was ousted by a Western-backed coalition in
elections last fall. Bosnia's current prime minister, Alijah Behmen, said in an interview that it
was "really certain that the money disappeared" at the mission in New York. In an undated letter to former Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic after the
audit, Sacirbey acknowledged using $609,253 from consular fees collected at the
mission to pay expenses not approved by the Foreign Ministry. He also said, "Mr.
President I remind you that for these expenses I could not, nor was I allowed,
to ask the consent from anyone but you." Izetbegovic tartly replied in a letter that Sacirbey's explanations were
"absolutely unacceptable" and denied approving Sacirbey's claimed payments of
$292,000 in cash to lawyers representing Bosnia at the International Court of
Justice in The Hague -- payments for which the auditors said Sacirbey never
presented receipts. "Funds could have been approved" for the lawyers through normal channels,
Izetbegovic said in the letter. "However, the approval for it should have been
requested in due time and well documented." He said Sacirbey should "come to
Sarajevo immediately" and "bring documents." Sacirbey said in the interview that "I don't really have any reason to go
back" and doubted he would get a fair hearing. The U.N. mission funded its operations partly from the Foreign Ministry's
budget and partly with revenue from consular fees, which totaled roughly $1.3
million in 2000. But hundreds of thousands of dollars from such fees were never
deposited into embassy accounts, according to the audit. The mission spent much more than the Foreign Ministry had approved for its
employees' vacation pay, travel expenses, child care, apartment and automobile
rentals, advertising and entertainment, the auditors said. In particular, the auditors said that last October, shortly before Sacirbey's
party lost power, the Foreign Ministry dispatched an accountant to New York to
alter records of sizable, unreturned travel advances given to Sacirbey. The
accountant explained at the time that the changes were "of a temporary nature .
. . to give the ambassador more time to pay back the money," according to a
written statement by Ajisa Dervisevic, a cashier at the mission. In his undated letter, Sacirbey said that he not only made unapproved
payments for Bosnia's lawsuit against Yugoslavia at The Hague, but traveled
there repeatedly between 1998 and 2000 at a total cost of $112,000. The auditors
rejected this claim, noting that "there were no major activities concerning this
lawsuit in 2000" and that Sacirbey had not presented evidence to back up his
claims.
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