The director of the Slovenian Ljubljanska Banka (LB), Borut Ozura, has said that the now defunct bank does not have any assets in Slovenia, a comment on the possibility that two final verdicts by Slovenian courts in disputes between LB and its clients from Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina could set a precedent for other such cases, the Slovenian media reported on Tuesday.
"The courts are doing their job, but they should also establish the bank's assets to be used for settling the depositors' claims," Ozura told the Maribor-based Vecer daily.
Ozura's statement was a comment on the latest case of an LB client from Sarajevo who had sued the bank at a court in Frankfurt. After a trial that lasted several years, the court ruled that he should be given back his savings deposits in the amount of US $80,000 plus interest. The verdict has now been upheld by a court in Ljubljana and under the law, a procedure is now expected to be launched to seize the bank's assets to secure the payment of the claims.
This is the second verdict by a Slovenian court in favour of the so-called old foreign currency savings clients.
In March this year the Ljubljana Municipal Court ruled in favour of a woman from Zagreb. Around one hundred other cases are yet to be dealt with by Slovenian courts in which LB clients are claiming back their foreign exchange deposits that were blocked at the time of the former Yugoslav federation.
Ozura said he doubted that LB's assets would be seized "because the bank has no assets in Slovenia".
The bank has assets outside Slovenia, in the form of claims, he said, adding that there was a theoretical possibility that the clients who had sued the bank would claim back their deposits following the definition of the bank's assets, which he said included its claims from companies in the former Yugoslavia and its share in the former National Bank of Yugoslavia (NBJ).
The issue depends on succession talks at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, and had that process been completed, depositors would have already claimed back their savings, Ozura said.
After a financial crisis and problems with the payment of foreign exchange deposits to citizens after the disintegration of the former Yugoslav federation, Slovenia launched a process to restructure state-owned banks that was completed in 1997, and gave guarantees for foreign exchange savings of Slovenian depositors.
It did not give guarantees for foreign exchange savings of other clients of Ljubljanska Banka.
The Slovenian government believes that the issue of old foreign exchange savings deposits should be settled in line with the territorial principle and links it with the establishment of the final balance of the National Bank of Yugoslavia at the time when the former federation broke up, since the NBJ guaranteed citizens' foreign currency savings at the time.
The restructuring of Ljubljanska Banka, Slovenia's biggest bank, started in 1993 and was never completed. In 1994, a constitutional law was passed establishing Nova Ljubljanska Banka (NLB) which does not consider itself a legal successor to LB even though it has taken over its assets.
