Source: "Blic"
The information about the astounding wealth of the leaders of the Saric narco cartel heighten the doubts among the general public that our privatization process provides a great opprotunity for 'laundering' of dirty money. And, all this allowed us to witness an «interesting» manner of communication utilized by state authorities, which reminds us of that childrens' game of «broken telephones».
First, the Administration for the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing stated that in Serbia, mainly through privatizations, over 1.700.000.000 euros is ‘laundered’ each year. That is a quarter of the state budget!!
Then, the Privatization Agency informed the public that it has been submitting ‘a bunch’ of requests for information verification with regards to suspicious clients and transactions to the Administration for years, but to no avail. As a matter of fact, it received the requested information only once, even though it sent over 1769 requests to the Administration.
Then, the Administration stated that since July 2008 it has not received a single verification request from the Agency. The Agency, they say, in that period did not express any doubts as to where the money comes from or about the credibility of any of the privatization participants. And, in total, from April 2002 until today, the Agency sent only 2 verification requests to the Administration!!
And, finally, the Agency yet again publicly confirmed that, not only did it send 1769 requests, but that the last request was sent just a few days ago!!
Even for our general public, which is used to many odd things, this ‘high level of agreeableness’ is too much, isn’t it? And what now? Is it ‘the best’ to ‘put an end’ to this thing? Not to deal with ‘details’ such as the (lack of) existence of 1767 random requests. Should we be addressing ‘serious matters’, instead of conducting a ‘witch hunt’? Or, is it better to seek answers to all these open questions, including the main one – related to the effects of the mechanism for the prevention of money laundering? We have been ‘constructing’ the mechanism for almost a decade, since 2002, and it is supported both logistically and financially, hence it is not cheap, au contraire. And, only about ten cases have been processed, while only one or two have been brought to a close. Is this the desired result?
