Anscheinend hat die Hypo Alpe-Adria in Montenegro enge Geschäftsbeziehungen zu per Haftbefehl gesuchten Drogenhändlern unterhalten. Einer davon war Darko Sarkic

The Montenegrin Hypo Alpe Adria Bank  (HAAB) approved, and processed through the bank software, two gold Visa cards to Darko and Dusko Saric, each with a credit limit of 20,000 euros. The brothers made a deposit, representing half this amount, on 15^th January. The cards were activated on 19^th January at the HAAB branch in Pljevlja. The cards are picked up in person, unless an authorisation is issued by the courts. On that day, Darko was already on an arrest warrant issued by Serbian authorities. Two days later, on 21^st January, when Podgorica received the Serbian arrest warrant, the Montenegrin authorities hastened to announce that Darko Saric was not in Montenegro.

Several weeks after the Visa cards were issued to them, the Saric brothers' card information was erased from Hypo Alpe Adria Bank  records. The paid deposits were also erased. So, any trace of possible transaction was lost. Where Darko might have been paying, in which shops, cities and countries, and whether he used his HAAB Visa card at all will remain unknown. According to our laws, erasing bank account data from the system is a criminal act.

The business operations between Hypo Alpe Adria Bank  and the Saric empire, more precisely the persons and companies linked to the runaway drug lord, are being analysed by the Administration for the Prevention of Money Laundering (USPN). All this should also be of interest to the Hypo Alpe Adria Bank  head office in Vienna. The situation for the Bank Headquarters is not rosy either due to several financial scandals in the region and suspicions that dirty money from the Balkans was injected into legal flows through this fast-growing bank prior to its nationalisation late last year.

Documents seen by Monitor indicate that the business operations of both HAAB and Hypo Alpe Adria Leasing (HAAL) included, at the very least, quite a few unusual transactions with companies and persons connected to Darko Saric, who is suspected of smuggling more than two tonnes of cocaine. 

Here are some examples:

On 21^st February, 2009: Dragan aka Fric Dudic, businessman from Kotor with close business relations with the Saric brothers, was declared by the bank’s management board a client of special significance to the bank, so the fee charged to him was reduced from 0.6 to 0.1 percent. Only a few legal and physical persons have a privileged status with the bank. This decision cost the bank some money, since Dudic's companies had transactions running into millions with Hypo Alpe Adria Bank .

The Administration for the Prevention of Money Laundering was informed by HAAB that Dudic, together with his son Damjan, who also has a privileged client status, had withdrawn multi-million cash amounts from this bank since December, when the Saric case became topical. HAAB allegedly granted such a privileged status to the Dudics’ on the basis of large deposits made by Flipside Trading Co, a company from the Marshall Islands. 

HAAB signed multiple term-deposit contracts with Matenico LLC off-shore company. The owners of Matenico are Jovica Loncar and Miro Mrdak from Pljevlja. They put large deposits at Hypo Bank to guarantee for the loans granted to Pljevlja-based Mat Co., whose formal owners are Jovica Loncar and Matenico LLC. So, Loncar and Matenico in effect used the deposits to guarantee for themselves. Loncar and Mrdak gained media attention when it was discovered that they, along with several other persons connected to the Saric brothers, have shares in the state-owned newspaper Pobjeda. The Commercial Court register shows that the first founder of Mat Co. was Dusko Saric.

On 30^th December, 2009: In the midst of the action against Saric, Hypo Alpe Adria Bank  approves a working capital loan to Mat company in the amount of 2,850,000 euros. This was guaranteed by Matenico with a 2,499,624-dollar deposit. An unfertile 2464 m² plot of land, as well as a 2741 m² parcel and a 73 m² commercial building in Pljevlja were also put as collateral. The interest rate was set at 10 percent. This loan was signed by directors Kristian Toeltl and Tarik Telacevic on behalf of HAAB, and by Muhamed Delagija on behalf of MAT. Incidentally, Tarik Telacevic is from Pljevlja. 

On 6^th November, 2009: The same bank manager duo signed a 1,000,000 euro HAAB loan deal to Mat Co. Again, the purpose was working capital. This loan was secured by a Mat Co. promissory note and cash from Matenico off-shore company in the amount of just 400,000 dollars. The interest rate for that loan was 10 percent. During that period, the banks in Montenegro approved loans very rarely and at significantly higher interest rates. However, even though it practically ceased all loan activity, Hypo Bank granted loans to its selected clients from Pljevlja.

On 10^th September, 2009:  Mat Co. raised another loan at HAAB, this one in the amount of 1,000,000 euros, which was guaranteed by 800,000 euros deposited by Blaza Dedic's Maestralturs company from Budva.  Maestralturs was at that moment already in default to HAAB on some earlier borrowings. The interest rate on that loan, signed by HAAB’s Toeltl and Telacevic and Jovica Loncar on behalf of Mat, was a fantastic five percent. Blaza Dedic was associated with Saric by Serbian media. Dedic allegedly traded in hotels in Vojvodina on Saric's behalf, and this is being investigated by local authorities. Dedic denied such press allegations.

On 5^th May, 2009: Mat took out a 3,000,000 euro loan at HAAB, guaranteed again by Matenico off-shore company with a 3,000,000 euro deposit. The interest rate on that loan was four percent. Why did Matenico, as the founder of Mat Co., in this case once again lend money to itself through HAAB as the intermediary, to which it pays an interest?

On 18^th January, 2008: Kotor-based Secondo Porto DOO, owned by Dragan Dudic, raised a 5,000,000 euro loan from HAAB. This loan was guaranteed by a promissory note of Bastion Commerc, a company owned by Dragan's son Damjan, and by Kotor-based companies Interdepo doo and Trecom doo also with promissory notes and mortgages registered on four business premises in Kotor, of 315, 338, 440 and 596 m² in size. The interest rate was 6.99. This loan deal was signed by Janko Rackovic for Secondo Porto doo and by the same HAAB directors as in other cases.

On 21^st February, 2008: A deal between Hypo Alpe Adria Leasing and Secondo Porto doo from Kotor relating to the leasing of the four business premises mentioned above and mortgaged to secure the loan (see the previous paragraph). The leasing amount was 6,386,000 euros. This leasing deal worth millions was covered only with promissory notes, and was signed by Bernd Achatz and Slaven Grizelj as directors on behalf of Hypo Alpe Adria Leasing while Secondo Porto was represented by Janko Rackovic. It remains unclear how Secondo Porto could possibly buy business premises which were mortgaged to HAAB for a loan only 33 days earlier. What was the collateral on that loan, unless it was paid off in a month, even though it had a maturity of 72 months with a one-year grace period?

It is visible from the chart attached by Monitor that, between January 2008 and December 2009, Mat Company doo from Pljevlja (owned by Jovica Loncar and Matenico LLC) raised loans from Hypo Alpe Adria Bank  and Hypo Alpe Adria Leasing which were guaranteed by Matenico LLC (owned by Jovica Loncar and Miro Mrdak), Maximus Shipping (owned by Dragan Dudic) and Secondo Porto Shipping (owned by Dragan Dudic). Interestingly, all these loans are being repaid by off-shore companies Flipside Trading Co and Montefllowery S.A., owned by the young student Damjan Dudic, as approved by the bank’s management board and subject to the annexes made to the original loan agreements.

INVESTIGATORS: Everywhere in the world such transactions undergo control by the anti-fraud agencies.

Investigators in charge of the Balkan Warrior operation link Saric to several off-shore companies. Sources from the very top of the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs claim that the man from Pljevlja appearing on the arrest warrant hired whole teams of top economic experts for money laundering. Saric's experts are claimed to have laundered money allegedly through Secondo Porto Shipping, Maximus Shipping and Matenico LLC off-shore companies and Durabilly LLC.  All of them are privileged clients of Hypo Bank. Transactions conducted by these companies are under special scrutiny of Serbian, American, Italian and other international agencies.

In the report submitted to the members of the parliamentary security committee, the Montenegrin police does not list any of these companies as being owned by Saric. However, it does mention Municipijum discotheque and  Hollywood café, Carobnjak bakery in Pljevlja, Miro construction material depot, FC Rudar, Mat shop free-shop and Max Prestige hotel in Budva.

UNDER THE WATCHFUL EYE: Saric's connections with the associates, persons and companies appearing in the ownership structure of Maximus discotheque in Kotor have also been identified. The Montenegrin police said that Saric owns 70 percent of Maximus and that the discotheque is registered on the Trecom company, owned by Dragan Dudic. Dudic bought the club from Rodoljub Radulovic who, as the owner of Trecom, got a 20-year lease from the Kotor municipality on seven exclusive premises in the Old Town as far back as 1989. Trecom was sold by Radulovic to Dudic through his company Bastion commerc, a naval freight forwarding company which, in addition to discotheque Secondo Porto, also owns Rivijera factory. Apart from the palaces and commercial premises in Kotor, Dudic also bought something that might be most useful to Saric in shipping his cargo of valuable goods from Latin America to Europe: a pier, the port of Risan and vessels.

The transactions concluded through HAAB and HAAL over the past few years with the companies associated to one of the biggest drug dealers in Europe, according to the top figure of the Administration for the Prevention of Money Laundering, are suspicious and are being investigated (see the box). But they are not the only ones. Monitor has also written about a loan deal between Aco and Milo Djukanovic's Prva banka and Saric's Mat Co. Who else is also involved in this story and how will the Montenegrin investigative authorities react, remains to be seen.