Savers in the now bankrupt Eurostandard Bank say that the main recipient of credits from the bank is a group of inter-linked companies from Strumica, the stronghold of SDSM party leader Zoran Zaev. This fits the allegations from bank owner Trifun Kostovski, who said that SDSM destroyed his bank in order to divide its deposit base of about 60 million EUR.
The Strumica based group owes 8.25 million EUR to the bank, in credits it took while offering little collateral that will be difficult to collect.
We need to find out who is behind the group which pocketed our money? Owner Kostovski said that our savings were given to the ruling political party. If that is true, we need to know who was involved in this massive theft?, the association of savers said.
Many of the savers will be reimbursed through a fund propped up by the state and other, solvent banks. Those with deposits of over 30,000 EUR will lost everything above that sum. Kostovski said that a manager he appointed to the bank duped him by presenting its financial state in glowing terms while he was actually giving loans to shell companies linked to SDSM who he had an insider agreement with. It could be very difficult to track down the actual owners of these companies and collect on the collateral they offered, especially if the state institutions, under SDSM control, don’t cooperate.
On top of destroying the bank, the deals made insolvent the Macedonian Post Office, which had an exclusive contract to conduct financial transfers through the bank. The Zaev Government is now working on a new contract with the Post Office, that will likely be far more encompassing and could amount to its privatization.
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