Bad loans required political support

KRUSEVAC - Serbia's Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said on Tuesday that unsecured loans from state-owned banks could not have been taken out without assistance from some politicians, and that the public would learn their names once the suspects in those schemes started talking.

Vucic told reporters that the people will learn the names of the politicians who helped with these schemes involving bad loans once one of the suspects started talking.

"It is impossible to imagine that an individual tycoon did it on his own, but instead he had to secure poitical support within a government-owned bank," he stated.

Commenting on the Monday arrest of Farmakom owner Miroslav Bogicevic, Vucic pointed out that the investigation would be expanded, and that the things Bgicevic had been arrested for were just the part of the illegal dealings that had been investigated so far.

The government banks' exposure to bad credit is at EUR 300-500 million on average per suspect, he noted.

That kind of thievery and fraudulent business will no longer be possible in Serbia, he claims.

Photo Tanjug Video, camera operator Marko Trosic