18.11.2016 What Transparency International-Macedonia started in January this year as a case Cubus vs Komercijalna Banka AD Skopje in the past 10 months has grown into a case from which can be seen numerous irregularities in the banking sector. Analyses of Transparency International Macedonia, which done in cooperation with attorneys and consultant damaged, showed that:
• These are numerous financial transactions arising from loans and borrowings;
• Larger number of banks are involved in the financial transactions and also companies and individuals who are associated with the banks through business, ownership and management;
• From the analysis of transactions and the movement of money, a pattern or modus operandi of financial engineering can be perceived, which aims to allow individuals associated with banks to take illegal banking operations in order to gain material benefit;
• The benefit obtained to the detriment of companies that are used to cover up the irregularities in the operations, but also at the expense and detriment of other shareholders in the banks.
• Transactions are conducted and controlled by employees in the banking sector and well versed in banking operations, as well as persons related to banks.
• Knowledge of laws and regulations for banking operations and the experience that it is improperly applied, allow these individuals to smoothly conduct criminalized actions;
• Criminalize actions according to our data last from 2004 to 2014, and some of them end up in this period by initiated legal proceedings or execution procedures.
After publication of the case Cubus and Cubus Engineering, TI Macedonia received complaints from more people by claiming that they were victims of financial engineering. The owners of these companies were present at the press-conference.
Brief review of their cases can be found in the text below.
1. In the period 2004-2011 the companies Cubus and Cubus Engineering from Skopje had business communications with Komercijalna Banka AD Skopje within which by the responsible person at the bank and connected persons and companies, were exposed to influence to take actions that were not in favor of their operations. The case was reported to the Ministry of Interior where action has been taken to advance investigation and determination of the actual situation, and in 2013 the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Skopje submitted criminal charges. Expertise is undertaken.
a. In this case – Cubus,the company is used as a company with a good credit rating, which should appeared as a recipient of the credit before the money be traced to a company that is exposed to credit for which credit could not be approved. A large network of affiliated companies company is established which receive such loans, and then do not return them. The goal was Cubus to become insolvent, go into bankruptcy, so they could keep the money.
b. During the monitoring of the case three criminal charges were prepared and submitted to a competent public prosecutor and criminal charges against expert are brought for misuse of position and taking actions in a situation of conflict of interests.
2. Eureka Informatic is a company that is included in the above mentioned network of associated companies. Without knowledge of the company big amount of money,through their account, ended in another.They forwarded money from Cubus to other firms also.
3. KI-Metal is a company that bought the factory Cane Taleski in Kicevo. The company pledged the entire property of the factory as a guarantee for the company Metallica to take a credit from Komercijalna bankа, so that the company can be restarted. For collateral of property valued for 970,000 euros, they received a loan of 1.4 million, that later, followed by the annexes to the agreement, exceeded two million. Ki-Metal as the owner of the factory took loan, but itdoes not restart because that members of Metallica decided to spend the money on other things instead of materials as intended. First, they uploaded the monel at Uni Bankа, after which no one knows where and how they were spent, but certainly were not spent according to their purpose in accordance with the loan agreement. When the factory went bankrupt, Commercial Bank has taken away the property from Ki-Metal and leased to Metallica.
4. Adil Mustafa owns the hospital “Shendeti” in Tetovo. To finish off the construction he received loan by Stopanska Bankа, but then, he was called by people from Uni Bank who prevailed him to abandon the loan from Stopanska Bankа and to take loan from them at very favorable conditions. He agreed, but since then he had been approved only smaller amounts against the agreement. He was asked, all previously built object worth five million as collateral with the objective loan to continues to keep in the A category. When he no longer could regularly returns the loan because of the difficult conditions for payment imposed by the bank, people from Uni Bankа connected him with other companies formed specifically for the transfer of loans and loans in order reaching the money to the final user which is incompetent for taking credit. All that in order to be conditioned to give part of his company to others so he can be given money for returning the loans.
5. others in order to be awarded additional funds to repay existing loans.
Sources of information and status of cases
For the analysis of these cases we used publicly available official data, mostly from the central register of the Republic of Macedonia. Providing such data is quite expensive, but necessary.
Ongoing proceedings are undertaken to the competent authorities for investigation and accusation
Heretofore, the work has shown that the institutions do not have sufficient capacity and resources for this type of analysis and expertise, but are not ready to call professional help.
Institutions, primarily the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia and the courts acting in a civil procedure, despite the indications that it is a phenomenon in which the abuse of banking individuals have acquired a significant property gain, are not reluctant to timely take actions within their competences, such as:
a) Supervision of banking operations in terms of compliance of regulations for the related parties, which are solely responsible
b) The imposition of interim measures to secure property that was used as a means to carry out criminal acts and to ban executions over this property.
TI Macedonia expresses satisfaction with the cooperation with the Public Prosecutor of the Republic of Macedonia and the institutions responsible for investigations.
TI Macedonia expresses its gratitude to the Secretariat of TI in Berlin who is closely monitoring the case and rejected all accusations against TI Macedonia defamation or appointment of persons involved in the case.
TI Macedonia calls and other businessmen who were victims of this kind of financial crime to report it to the office of TI Macedonia.
In addition to this is the video animation that was delivered to all media representatives and is available on the following link http://bit.ly/2hn3ttQ
