Word: yugoslavs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Pozderac's resignation was swiftly followed by that of Metod Rotar, president of the Ljubljanska Banka, a state-run bank that had bought large quantities of Agrokomerc's promissory notes. Yugoslav officials hinted that still more resignations, and possibly more arrests, were to come. Despite some rumors to the contrary, there was no evidence that the government, which is run by Prime Minister Branko Mikulic, 59, was in danger of falling. But Yugoslav economists estimate that in 1986 alone thousands of enterprises besides Agrokomerc issued unbacked promissory notes and other flimsy financial instruments amounting to more than $9 billion...
...more than a month, newspapers in Yugoslavia have been dribbling out the details of the country's biggest financial scandal since World War II. The scam centers on Agrokomerc, a giant food-processing firm that issued up to $400 million in worthless promissory notes to 63 Yugoslav banks. So far eight people, including the firm's president, have been arrested. The scandal, dubbed "Agrogate" by the local press, took a dramatic turn last week. As allegations mounted that he and his family were implicated, Hamdija Pozderac, 63, Yugoslavia's Vice President, abruptly resigned. He had been scheduled to begin...
...swindle was the power that local Communist chiefs have over regional banks. According to Yugoslav press accounts, Abdic pressured the local branch of Privredna Banka, the Bosnian central bank, into providing guarantees for a steady flow of unsecured promissory notes issued by Agrokomerc. The guarantees made it possible for Agrokomerc to sell the notes for cash to other banks. Abdic plowed the proceeds into his ambitious development plans for the company and lavish community projects for Velika Kladusa, including an Olympic-size swimming pool...
...Tito in 1980, may now have the opportunity to push through needed reforms. On the reformers' list are such measures as liquidation of money-losing state companies, closer supervision of regional banks by central authorities, and curbs on the ability of regional governments to veto national legislation. Moreover, the Yugoslav press played an unusually aggressive role in uncovering the fraud, and optimists hope that the high-level resignations ^ and arrests indicate that the days of official cover-ups are ending...
...watch list" of some 40,000 suspected war criminals, convicts, deportees and others who are unwelcome in the U.S. To avoid interfering with the Austrian elections, Washington chose to conduct its own meticulous investigation, including the examination by a Justice Department team of previously unavailable records in the Yugoslav war archives. The probe gave careful scrutiny to material submitted on half a dozen occasions by Waldheim in his defense. In the end, the effort served only to turn up more incriminating evidence. Says a Justice Department official: "The more we checked, the worse...