http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/milosevic010702_money.html
Slobo’s Millions
World Watches for Milosevic’s Alleged Millions of Embezzled Dollars
By John K. Cooley
A T H E N S, Greece, July 2 — The trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the
international war crimes tribunal is expected to shed light on some of the
darkest chapters in Yugoslavia's history, including the flight of millions of
dollars of Yugoslavia's money, allegedly siphoned out by the former Yugoslav
president and his cronies.
As Milosevic awaits his Tuesday appearance in court in a comfortable but
spartan single cell at the Scheveningen detention center, the fortune he is
believed to have amassed during his 13-year reign is unlikely to ease his
circumstances during the trial. It could, however, help him hire defense
lawyers, some of whom arrived at The Hague today to plot the strategy for his
arraignment Tuesday before the tribunal. Milosevic was sent to The Hague on
Thursday to stand trial for alleged atrocities committed in Kosovo in 1999.
But while the "Butcher of the Balkans" is behind bars, little is known about
the hundreds of millions of dollars of Yugoslav assets Milosevic is believed
to have illegally moved into accounts in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Cyprus,
Greece and possibly other bastions of bank secrecy. "Serbia Inc." — as
Western intelligence officers refer to Milosevic's illicit financial empire —
was just one in a host of economic factors that turned Yugoslavia, once the
most prosperous of the former communist countries, into a war-ravaged,
impoverished nation. All in the FamilyBefore embarking on his political
career in the Serbian Communist Party, Milosevic worked as a manager in
Yugoslavia's Beobank in the 1970s and 1980s, a period where he is believed to
have learned how to manage complex financial deals. But while his alleged
stash of millions increased the financial worth of his inner circle and his
family members, neither Milosevic, nor his Serb wife Mira Markovic, nor their
youngest daughter Marija flaunted their wealth in public. The same cannot be
said for his son Marko, a flamboyant "playboy" who was often spotted dropping
in at Belgrade nightclubs and gambling dens in fast cars. He was known to be
a prime player in the black market economy. Marko, believed in hiding in a
former Soviet-bloc country, was said by Yugoslav prosecutors to control the
cigarette smuggling and gasoline bootlegging trade. He owned a villa and a
yacht docked on the Greek seacoast near Athens, and commuted between the
Greek mainland, Greek islands and the island republic of Cyprus. Assets
Across EuropeInvestigators tracking Serbian assets located foreign accounts
attributed to Milosevic under cover names and offshore firms in Cyprus, where
the Central Bank froze Serbian accounts in the early 1990s. Days after his
arrival at The Hague, officials at The Hague asked the Cypriot Central Bank
to cooperate in locating assets which may have been misappropriated by
Milosvic or his associates. "The Cyprus Central Bank cooperated by sending us
more than 30 cartons of relevant documents," a source at The Hague court told
ABCNEWS.com. Switzerland is also reportedly cooperating with The Hague. Both
Switzerland and Liechtenstein have been obliged to loosen their banking
secrecy laws under international pressure. A War-Ravaged EconomyBut while
investigators chase Milosevic's alleged missing millions across a labyrinth
of foreign accounts, the Yugoslav economy, shattered by four wars and a
pummeling of its infrastructure over the past few years, struggles to limp
back to its pre-war standard of living. A $1.28 billion pledge made by the
United States and other Western donors at a conference in Brussels on Friday
is widely believed to ease some of the economic burdens facing the country.
But with most of the money expected to go towards servicing the country's
crushing $12.2 billion foreign debt, ordinary Serbs are likely to see only a
sliver of that money. A large chunk of international aid is expected to be
plugged into rebuilding the country's infrastructure, which was damaged by
NATO during its 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia.
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