MY ALMIGHTY AUNT

The rise and fall of the owner of "Dafiment" Bank Dafina Milanovic

AIM, BEOGRAD, February 1

She is "the mother of Serbia" and a Madame Saint Jean of sorts. 174 cms tall, on 8cms high heels, she gave up dieting a long time ago and she simply does not walk, but marches. She shouts, slams doors, is always at odds with colours and designs. She parades in front of cameras, with an enormous flower on her bosom, an elaborate pink hat and insultingly expensive jewelry in this tide of poverty. Dafina Milanovic, the owner of "Dafimentbanka" is better known in Serbia than any other woman in the world, because over a period of two years, from 1991 to 1993, she virtually robbed her depositors of approximately DM 1.5 to 2.3 billion.

However, official sources claim that the foreign currency debt amounts to DM 350 million, and the number of victims has also rapidly "shrunk" so that instead of five million only about 100,000 ruined people are mentioned. While she is being questioned with levity these days by the Board of Inquiry of the Assembly of Yugoslavia she enthusiastically still claims that the 10 - 15% monthly interest rates on foreign currency deposits were justified, that what is illogical is logical. Preceeding the Romanian and Hungarian swindlers, as the Serbian champion of insolence, Dafina Milanovic, with the all-out support of the state implements the "chain of luck of St.Anthony". She publicizes what is ordinary robbery in the papers and on TV, because interest could not be paid out at all without new depositors. Today, with Messianic rapture she says: "I achieved what I wanted". With a multitude of words she really says nothing to the Board of Inquiry, but only mildly hints that some governors and people in power had their fingers in that pie. Well informed circles claim that she is "hitting the bull's eye" and that many in high government offices are trembling.

The singing maid from the countryside

"She is either perfidious or sick", said the well-known lawyer from Belgrade, Sava Andjelkovic. Milenko Radic, a lawyer and the President of the Fund for the Development of Democracy thinks she is unscrupulous and a hardened criminal and that a sick woman could not substitute a miserable little flat, with no water-supply system for a luxurious villa in only two years. Something in-between is probably true, something which rules out mental illness and puts her in the most dangerous category of, what are known as "normal lunatics", who like true great illusionists themselves believe in miracles. With fascinating energy, suggestiveness and gambling interest rates she stirred up the masses. Her depositors come from all walks of life, from people who deposited their last penny so as to survive for just another month, to fabulously rich, who vailed : More! The feeling of being preordained for "big things" follows Dafina from Skobalj, the village of her birth. Her father is not typical of his environment, he is tall, handsome, well - read and - seriously ill.

She has enviable drive and ambition, but wastes them on singing old Bosnian love songs, rural beauty contests and dancing of Serbian folk dances. Secondary School of Economy gives her a modest education, so she comes to Belgrade and marries a ship's captain. To suit her purposes, she sometimes says that he is penniless (his company went broke), and sometimes that he bought her a sumptuous mansion and DM 120,000 worth jewelry with his successful business exploits. She also claims that she has the diploma of the Faculty of Economy, but not a single journalist has, so far, (although many have tried) managed to obtain proof of that claim. From 1986, much before she was "chosen for big business" she managed to "make" a two-kilos heavy criminal record with her numerous criminal offences. To list all the offences from that period would mean writing an extensive expert paper, rather than a newspapaer article.

As chief accountant in a Belgrade firm, she issues 350 bad cheques, forges the signatures of workers, steals gasoline coupons, abuses her function. She spends several months in prison and is then released with a certificate on mental incompetence. In court, as a rule, she confesses to everything, invokes her motherhood, repents and starts repaying money. As soon as she is free, in another firm, she makes the same mistakes all over again, with crossed cheques of the firm she buys everything that crosses her mind, takes ten big credits from four banks and then does not pay the installments. As soon as new criminal charges are brought against her, she becomes pregnant.

In short, that woman is capable, from Tuesday to Thursday, for instance, of stealing so much that even five dedicated policemen, in the best judicial system, cannot cope with that. At the end of the 90's the District Court in Belgrade sentenced her to two years and three months of prison, and pronounced a security measure - prohibiting her to touch other people's money for a further period of four years (to the end of 1994). The decision waws overruled. After six indictments and five years of trials, she is acquitted "due to negligible societal danger". The whole file was "buried" and until May 1993, when the Bank collapsed, the public knew nothing about that. When a journalist asks her an embarassing question about the past, she says she had to do that so her children would not go hungry. Why did she then steal wagonloads of gravel, asks the journalist, and she answers: "That was a frame up".

Some policemen are getting back at me, but I am an honourable person, I don't want to shame them". Children were always her shield. When in July 1992, in Hungary, two of her children and her husband died in a car accident, that became a propaganda slogan for her. Only two months before the total collapse of the Bank and several months after the tragedy she says: "I dreamed that they came to my bed. They told me - Mummy, we were angels that God needed. He sent you down here to be our source of light on Earth. You have been sent to feed the people until this hell is over for Serbia. As long as I live, as long as I can work, I will not betray my people". Then she tried to flee the country six times and was caught every time, and now she is practically a state hostage.

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING

It is not difficult the find the explanation of her amazing success. For her "escapades" in the past were undoubtedly followed by the vigilant eye of Orwell's Big Brother. In the overall chaos in Serbia, even though there is no Stalin, his moustache has nevertheless remained, so that only the political police still works immpecably. The state needs Dafinas, because it has its needs when foreign deposits have been frozen and the mistrustful citizens keep their foreign currency in their stockings. War cannot be waged without foreign currency either. The banking expert Branko Colanovic said that from the very beginning it was a war-profiteering bank which, under abnormal circumstances did a great service to the state. Thus, we can look on Dafina Milanovic as a product of a police mind, which unmistakably finds the right person for the largest robbery in the Balkans. It needs a robber out of conviction and not a rational thief, who asks questions and sets the terms. In that context, we can view the case of a similar banker - Jezdimir Vasiljevic - who refused to pay the unreasonably high state racket and simply fled the country.

Although it is not known how much eqity capital Dafina had for the establishment of the Bank, in June 1992 the National Bank of Yugoslavia gave her the broadest "five stars" authority. She gets the best locations in town, the regime television unscrupulously advertises her projects and in return gets DM 100,000. Whenever she falters, she gets prime time on TV News. In December 1992 television even assures the depositors that everything is all right, and films the Bank's safe full of foreign currency. In order to keep up with the times Dafina becomes a big Serbian patriot and believer out of fashion. She says: "Everyone in my family believes in God quite a lot". About Milosevic: "He is very clever and honest. He is a man who cries when he hears what is happening to the Serbian people in Bosnia, especially to the children". Money gives her power and she becomes euphoric.

According to experts, in two years that woman squandered and threw away more money than Serbia could collect at this moment even if all pockets were turned inside out. During her rise, she employed 120 tough guys as bodyguards.Her house is full of expensive furniture, confused maids in starched uniforms, a multicoloured parrot and wireless phones, but still everything seems out of place, as an American motel on the road to a passive state.

Crossing over to Hungary at that time without control, she impudently bribes the customs officers in the police station and hands out gold watches to their superiors. When her daughter had a baby in the state hospital, the whole floor was evacuated, the doctor got the latest Mercedes, and she gave everyone she met in the corridor DM 2000. "It was embarrassing to see all those people pushing and grabbing the money", comments a witness. Her new "friend" becomes the Bank's lawyer, and is presented with a kangaroo-skin briefcase worth DM 28,000. Then a classical Mercedes, a sports Mercedes and finally a Mercedes convertible. She says: I can buy anything I want with my capital". Her cabinet resembles a ship in size. Costly furniture, palms and fountains - everything stinks of money. At the beginning she spoke only praise of her depositors: "They want to see me, hear me, touch me, kiss me". When the Bank stopped paying out money, she called them cattle and idlers who want an easy life. Personnel is "carefully" picked in the largest Bank in the Balkans. Her younger brother Dobrica, with a pigtail, known as a petty thief in the village, always in the shadow of his ambitious sister, becomes Personnel Manager.

The second man in the concern Rade Spasov is an accordion (perhaps a clarinet) player by profession, from Smederevo. An important figure in the Bank is also a woman, a failure at law studies, whose main vocation is not banking. Dafina leaves her first accounting firm with about 80 clients to her daughter and son-in-law, who is a porter by profession. Finally, Klara Mandic, a dentist, becomes an advisor in the Bank on a salary of US $ 2,000. Dafina's nephew makes a record and the hit song is "My Almighty Aunt". Accounting is anti - accounting, only the contracts with depositors are printed meticulously. It is as if we should buy apples and flour for a pie and then find out that there was no stove in the kitchen.

Money was taken away by the suitcase, with only slips of paper as receipts, and the lawyer Milenko Radic who has been on this case for a long time, claimed at the end of September last year that all the documentation on "Dafimentbanka" had disappeared from the National Bank of Serbia. What did the state do during that period? Watch and submit bills. Through the CIP (Center for Research and Design), often in the presence of the mayor of Belgrade, Slobodanka Gruden, she invests in the Yugoslav Railways whose director is Milomir Minic, secretary general of the ruling party - the SPS. In the heat of the pre-election campaign in 1992, DM 4.5 million were taken from her account, for taxes. She "loans" seven billion dinars to the state for all the pensions in October, thus becoming the "favourite" of the pensioners, passionate supporters of Milosevic. To the Society of Emigrants of Serbia, i.e. to the regime man, Brana Crncevic, to be more precise, she gives DM 1.5 million and in October 1992 says that she will give a similar amount for refugees. Only two months before her total collapse she claims that she will purchase Serbia's debt. Immodestly and with pride she says: " I gave money to Radovan Karadzic for rifle sights and bullet proof vests".

She gives her village a million and a half marks for a telephone exchange. She cuts the ribbon and lays the cornerstone in the presence of the then governor of the National Bank of Serbia Bora Atanackovic. The anniversary of successful business operations is embellished by Aleksandar Bakocevic, Prince Tomislav Karadjordevic, minister of foreign affairs Vladislav Jovanovic. Television films her celebrating the Serbian New Year in Igalo together with Slobodanka Gruden and the Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic. Even the Serbian Patriarch Pavle writes her a thank you note for the overhaul of the central heating in the Patriarchate building. The notorious Zeljko Raznatovic

• Arkan is her frequent guest. She is seen on TV with the Federal Prime Minister, Radoje Kontic. She lets herself be filmed by the regime TV only a few months after the family tragedy, distastelessly bejewelled and with eyes red from crying, on New Year's eve party, in the company of Mihalj Kertes, the first man of state security.

From then on it is believed in Serbia that the tragedy was staged and this thesis is supported by the statement of Milenko Radic, who says that only five days before the accident 5 million marks in cash were taken from the "Dafimentbanka" and five plane tickets purchased. It is possible that this doubt is just part of the Balkan folklore, no one wants the truth and shattered hopes. People still leave placards with the message "Let Dafina work" in front of the Assembly and still wait for the runaway Jezda to come back to the country and compensate them for their lost money. What kind of an epilogue can be expected. The latest information says that the FRY guarantees foreign savings and the NBY dinar savings. This is something that "old foreign currency depositors" who lost all their savings several years ago, and felt such guarantees on their skin, heartily laugh at. The state lacks the courage to institute bankruptcy proceedings because of the wrath of the people and does not have the financial power to rehabilitate the Bank. It neither arrests Dafina, nor lets her go abroad for fear that she will "show her cards" there. Nevertheless, fear is growing, a bomb was thrown at her house in January. Many believe that in the end Dafina Milanovic will take her own life. Or that someone else will do that.

Gordana Igric