Virant requested the report from the police force a while ago, as "the moment is nearing when we'll learn how much money we will distribute to banks, especially the state-owned ones, to fill up the hole that was caused by mistakes and potentially criminal acts".

He reiterated that corporate crime and corruption were a priority for the police force, with emphasis on investigation into wrongdoing in the banking system. "These are acts that have caused great damage, which jeopardised the Slovenian financial system and the taxpayers will pay for it."

Intensive investigation at banks began in early 2011 with a probe into wrongdoing at the Austrian-owned Hypo bank, and expanded in the autumn to the state-owned NLB and NKBM banks and privately-held Gorenjska banka, and later also to Factor banka and Probanka, two private banks that are currently in the process of supervised liquidation.

Noting that investigators deemed cooperation by bank managements important for the success of their work, Virant praised the management of Hypo bank, while he was critical of the leadership of NLB, who he said cited legal reservations and bank secrecy in their failure to hand over documents.

He said the bank would not surrender the documents requested even after the court confirmed the police did not need a court order to obtain the material. Uncovering banking crime is a top priority in Slovenia and he deems it unacceptable NLB is not aware of that.

NLB's behaviour was also termed as unacceptable by head of the Specialised Prosecution Service Harij Furlan, while head of the special bank investigation task force comprising police investigators and prosecutors Jože Kozina pointed his finger at lower management, who he said were unwilling to cooperate.

NLB chairman Janko Medja is "still the most cooperative so far, but problems occur at lower levels of management", prosecutor Kozina said, adding that Medja had persuaded them "he wants to get to the bottom of the matter".

Set up in September, the group headed by Kozina currently also includes a Banka Slovenije official, "who has demonstrated keen interest in the investigation," Furlan said in presenting the interim report at a press conference together with the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).

While Virant announced he would propose changing the banking act so that bank secrecy would no longer apply for the handover of documents to police, prosecution and courts, Furlan told reporters at what was a separate press conference that the latest changes in the law did not make work easier for investigators.

Considering reports that came in from NLB, the bank sustained EUR 320m in damages through dodgy loans but it remains unclear whether the loans had been at least partly repaid and what is the collateral, Furlan said.

Investigation in one case concerning NLB has been concluded with five bankers suspected of abuse of office. Prosecutors will take a decision on the case after obtaining additional explanations from the bank.

Kozina said the biggest problem with NLB was recognising and defining damage as the bank and its technical services were persistently avoiding giving such data, which he said could jeopardise the whole criminal procedure.

The investigators have established that the bank had been very generous in lending money to companies they never heard of before and believe were only used as lever for larger uncreditworthy companies. In many cases loans were paid off with new ones, in which way the bank made its balance sheet look better.

Kozina also cited an example of a loan that was secured with a painting apprised at EUR 8m for the purpose of collateral, but which turned out to be a worthless forgery.

Investigations are also being conducted at other banks, including NKBM, in which case nine persons are considered suspects. "Criminal acts are being investigated in Slovenia as well as abroad, but the National Bureau of Investigation still needs extra banking data from Croatia," Furlan said.

He said it would be too risky to make any damage estimates at this point and that figures would have to be ascertained in criminal and civil proceedings at courts.

NBI chief Darko Majhenič noted that time had come for the state to assume responsibility for state assets and demand of bank managements to cooperate with law enforcement.

Speaking about only "declarative willingness" to cooperate by the middle management at NLB, he said: "Investigators are assessing that passivity by the leadership of the bank is due to the fact that there are still people employed there who could become suspects so they have no intention to cooperate."

Minister Virant pledged his full support of investigators, including for new hiring. He also announced that he would propose changes to the freedom information act so that data on bad loans to be transferred on the bad bank become accessible to the public.

Finance Minister Uroš Čufer responded that accountability for the situation should be established considering that the taxpayer's money would be used to fix the banks, while the question whether this should be done publicly or not should depend on effectiveness.

Čufer, who has held several important positions in the banking system, is not concerned about his responsibility, but he said that the efforts should not be restricted to the search for who is responsible, but also focus on prevention so that bad practice did not repeat.