Slovenian Banks Appeal against Controversial Zagreb Ruling
"Appeals by LB and NLB have been filed on time with the Municipal Court in Zagreb; the two-week period in which appeal is possible expires today", Rok Srakar of the Slovenian Embassy in Zagreb told the STA on Wednesday.
According to his information no new hearings are scheduled at the Zagreb court in the remaining 25 lawsuits against Slovenian banks in connection to the foreign currency savings deposits.
The court ordered LB and NLB on 21 January to compensate Croatia's Zagrebačka banka and PBZ bank for roughly EUR 27m worth of deposits that Croatian citizens transferred to Croatia's public debt in the early 1990s.
The two Croatian banks sued the Slovenian ones on behalf of the Croatian government, which paid out the deposits through the two banks.
The ruling in the two cases was the first since the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding in Mokrice in March 2013 in which Croatia committed to stay all proceedings against LB and NLB over the deposits until a resolution is reached as part of talks on succession to the former Yugoslavia.
Slovenia meanwhile pledged in the memorandum to open the way to ratification of Croatia's EU Accession Treaty in the Slovenian parliament. Croatia joined the EU in July 2013.
Slovenia has always argued that each country that emerged from the former federation guarantee for the savings deposits on its own territory, like Slovenia did in case of subsidiaries of banks from other parts of Yugoslavia.