Bosnia

Bosnia: Funds blocked from organizations suspected of links with terrorism
Nezavisne novine - September 30, 2004, Thursday

Excerpt from report by M. Cubro: "Millions of KM blocked", published by Bosnian Serb newspaper Nezavisne novine on 29 September

Sarajevo: In the past year, the Bosnia-Hercegovina BiH authorities have blocked the property of eight humanitarian organizations suspected of aiding the financing of terrorist activities, says the Report on the Fight Against Terrorism, submitted to the UN Antiterrorism Committee.

"We have blocked the financial resources of eight organizations because we discovered irregularities in their financial transactions that could be linked with certain illegal activities, such as terrorism. We have blocked several million convertible marks KM , and the entire documentation was forwarded to the BiH Prosecutor's Office," BiH Security Deputy Minister Dragan Mektic said yesterday.

In the past few months, the State Security Ministry has been collecting answers to the questions in the special questionnaire that the United Nations forwarded at the beginning of this summer to the BiH authorities. Yesterday, the state antiterrorist team reviewed this information.

"The UN sought from us information on bank transactions and on the steps we have taken to prevent money laundering and suspicious financial transactions. We have informed them that we blocked the resources of certain organizations and also established a special finance intelligence department within the State Investigation and Protection Agency SIPA to deal with this problem," Mektic explained.

The UN requires all its members to submit semi-annual reports on the fight against terrorism. In the past, the BiH authorities failed to submit these reports and were at the receiving end of much criticism over this.

"To date, we have submitted two reports. One deals with the legislative regulation of the fight against terrorism, while the other, recently sent to the UN, focused on financial transactions. These reports have previously not been submitted, which is why certain humanitarian organizations registered in Bosnia-Hercegovina have been placed on the UN blacklist as those who aid terrorism without our knowledge," Mektic pointed out.

SOURCE: Nezavisne novine, Banja Luka, in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian 29 Sep 04 p 3

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