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Spoetnik
04-02-05, 23:10
Balkan home truths: how Croatia swindled its exiled Serbs
Dragoslav Dupor and his family abandoned the Krajina peninsula 10 years ago. Ethnically cleansed, they and thousands of others have now been robbed of their homes. Vesna Peric Zimonjic reports from Zagreb on a shocking epilogue to war

04 February 2005

It was an early summer morning, almost 10 years ago, when Dragoslav Dupor woke up to the sounds of Croatian artillery shells and terrified screams. He packed his wife, their three children, a young grandchild and his mother into an old Lada and fled. In the panic, they had no time to look back at what they were leaving in Karin Gornji, a Serb village on Croatia's Adriatic coast.

"I had no time to think if I would ever see my home again. I knew I had a long journey ahead," says Mr Dupor.

Like more than 300,000 Croatian Serbs, the 60-year-old and his family fled to Serbia proper at the onset of the Croatian army offensive in August 1995, codenamed "Storm". In the wake of the sudden exodus, 50,000 homes were left empty.

A decade on and the Dupor family are no closer to returning to their coastal home. Instead they, along with thousands of other refugees, are the apparent victims of a scam that has salted the open wounds left by the Yugoslav wars of succession and threatened to derail Croatia's attempt to take the fast track into the European Union.

When Operation Storm had blown over, the rebellion by local Serbs against the authority of the newly independent Croatia was crushed. The bloody rebellion, launched with the direct backing of Serbia's strongman Slobodan Milosevic, cost the lives of more than 20,000 people. The offensive ended Serb resistance but it also brought an abrupt end to hundreds of years of Serb history in Croatia. Many thought that when peace finally came they would be able to return to their former homes. Today that hope is gone.

Thanks to a scheme run by corrupt officials and organised-crime syndicates, the abandoned homes were bought up by the Croatian state and sold for a profit behind their backs without the families seeing a penny.

Mr Dupor's nice little house is now home to a family of Bosnian Croats, themselves refugess of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Their new home came to them via the state-run Agency for Legal Transactions and Mediation in Real Estate (APN).

Vladimir Goatti took charge of APN last September with a mandate to reform the agency. He admits that there is a serious case to answer. "All these people were victimised twice," he told The Independent. "We [APN and the Croatian state] have to find the least traumatising solution for their problems now ... And all the people will get their property back, without any discussion, once the courts settle the matter."

The agency has been in business since 1997 but involvement of some officials in illegally trading refugees' homes was not known of until last month. It is now being described as one of the biggest Balkan swindles; a cunning new variation on the theme of ethnic cleansing.

Since its formation, APN has spent more than €200m (£140m) on buying 8,380 Serb homes in areas of Krajina or Slavonija, abandoned in 1995. According to Milorad Pupovac, the head of the Serb caucus in the Croatian parliament, much of this money found its way into private pockets. "It is estimated that between €4m and €8m were skimmed in this operation and that the money went into private pockets, both of the intermediaries and the crooked employees of APN."

Thanks to visa restrictions on Serbs crossing into Croatia - which were only relaxed last year - most transactions between APN and Serbs willing to sell their property were done through the Serbia-based, private real-estate agencies representing Croatian Serbs. The Serb owners were compelled to sign power of attorney over to agents who would then strike a deal with APN. On the surface things worked well for years. Then Mr Dupor and his friend Desimir Draca, 66, decided the time had come to sell their former homes. They quickly discovered that there was nothing left to sell. The houses they fled from had already been sold using forged paperwork with a fake power of attorney. The files on Mr Dupor's home included an authorised agreement for sale issued in 2004, but signed by his mother, Cvijeta, who died in 1997, and an uncle who died 70 years ago.

(etc..)
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=607557

888
06-02-05, 12:27
Dit vind ik gewoon triest, want tijdens de Balkan oorlog kregen de Serven de schuld van alles en de Kroaten werden als helden beschouwd.

Want Krajina is gewoon een 100% puur Servisch gebied. Maar ja, Slobodan Milosevic had in 1991 een gigantisch blunder begaan.
Als ze de Joegoslavische vlag niet had neergestreken en een nieuwe vlag had gehesen, dan was er niets aan de hand geweest.

Daarom vond ik Joseph Tito ook beter, want hij was echt een eenheidsworst die alle bevolkingsgroepen bij elkaar wist te houden en in harmonie samen konden leven.