Just reading the backlog of my email after BT's helpful screwup in marking it all spam, I found this snippet in the Kosovo news clippings. Surely anyone for the whom the phrase is used "has always denied any wrong doing" is guilty by association with the phrase itself. Or do people never use it?
03/23/2006 05:04:48
(IRISH INDEPENDENT)
IRELAND is at the centre of an international search for former Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic's hidden millions.
In the mid-1990s during the worst of the atrocities Ireland was heavily involved with business enterprises associated with Milosevic.
But attempts by the Serbian government to track down money funnelled out of the former Yugoslavia during the war have proven extremely difficult.
To date its investigators have primarily focused on Cyprus and Canada. But the money trail has also led them to Ireland.
In the mid-1990s Dublin was home to a business set up by the former president's notorious son, Marko.
Marko is currently a fugitive in Moscow and is wanted for questioning by Serbian authorities in relation to money taken out of the country during his father's rule.
Also in the 1990s a close business associate of the Milosevic regime, billionaire Bogoljub Karic, had Irish interests.
And in the late 1990s an Irish-based bank was involved in a controversial $102m transaction involving the then president of Croatia, the late Franjo Tudjman, who has also been accused of presiding over war crimes.
A recent draft report by the Financial Action Task Force revealed Ireland's lack of safeguards to ensure a careful eye is kept on financial transactions involving politically linked people.
It said that as it stands there are no specific legislative requirements in relation to politically exposed persons such as Marko Milosevic or his family's associates.
However, such requirements are due to be introduced under an EU directive.
PEPs are "individuals who are or have been heads of state or of government, senior politicians, senior government, judicial or military officials, senior executives of state-owned corporations and important party officals".
The international task force also said that with the exception of one major Irish bank "other parts of the financial industry have largely ignored PEPs so far".
By his early twenties, Marko Milosevic controlled a huge business empire including property, a disco named Madonna and a perfume shop called Scandal.
These enterprises flourished under the benevolent eye of his dictator father, making Marko a multimillionaire, but were thrashed by looters after his father's regime collapsed.
Despite the fighting turning against Serbia, Marko set up a company called M & G Enterprises in 1994 along with a relative of Mr Karic.
Mr Karic himself ran a company called BK Ireland between 1993 and 1999 with an address on Upper Mount Street in Dublin.
Another Irish-registered company called Daki International was alleged to have been used as a clearing house for a bank owned by Mr Karic, transferring around 50m out of Serbia.
This accusation was made by Mladjan Dinkic then governor of the National Bank of Yugoslavia and now Finance Minister of Serbia.
"Over the years millions of dollars flowed through the Astra Bank (then owned by Karic) in Belgrade to the bank's offshore unit in Cyprus, and then to offshore companies in Cyprus and Ireland . . . What is certain is that this money was never returned to Yugoslavia," Mr Dinkic said in 2001.
A spokesman who was contacted repeatedly over the past week said Mr Dinkic was travelling and would be unavailable to comment.
Daki International which had an address on Baggot Street traded between 1995 and 2000.
Philip Mark Croshaw is listed as a director of this company. In 1999 he was disqualified from being a director for 12 years by the Department of Trade and Industry in the UK. In the mid-1990s Mr Croshaw chalked up over 100 different directorships of Irish companies prior to his disqualification.
Mr Karic's business empire has been the subject of a huge probe by the Serbian judiciary since late 2005.
To date he has been accused of tax evasion, financial mis-reporting and attempted bribery.
Mr Karic has always denied any wrongdoing.
