Planes Without Owners

Four CL-215 Canadair planes equipped for putting out fires are turning against their new Greek owners and threatening to send them to jail just because they were a bit too greedy. Without any evident ownership, but with a host of potential inheritors, these planes were appropriated in Zadar. All the self-proclaimed owners in the long line of middlemen are keeping quiet and not offering any explanations on how and when the planes got to Greece, or on whether they were registered and in whose name, having been evidently reregistered several times. Explanations are especially lacking on the power games between the civil and military echelons of SRY, one represented by President Milosevic himself, the other by the Ministry of Defense. It is still not known whether the whole affair concerns mere economic interests, or whether it is a political matter. It only took two months for Greece to take the matter to court, from what was initially a documented press coverage, to what is now a criminal case against those responsible for fraud and falsifying documents. However, the decision is far off in the future. Nothing similar could be said to have taken place in Belgrade, even though there is an evident conflict between JAT and the Ministry of Defense on the question of ownership of the appropriated CL-214 Canadair planes. The only ones who are speaking out on the matter without holding back are the inheritor countries of the former SFRY, the last undisputed, official owner of the planes: the Athenian diplomatic representatives of Macedonia, Slovenia and Croatia announced to their host country that the whole affair is not to their liking and that they expect to be compensated when the whole question of the property of the former Yugoslavia is decided in court, because, the planes represent "property accrued from criminal activity", according to the investigation conducted by the Greek public prosecutor.

WHEELING AND DEALING: As the Greek media have uncovered in the past two to three months, the whole story of the four Canadair planes, models CL-215, begins at the end of 1991, when they appeared first at the airport in Tivat, than in Podgorica, and finally at the Belgrade airport. At about that time the long "paper trail" of ownership and registration of the planes begins: they were first registered in the name of SFRY (that is to say RV and PVO), and than transferred to the name of JAT, with the requirement that they be used strictly for putting out fires in the country. After that the registration was transferred to the Cypriot "mickey mouse" firm, Stigman Air Support Ltd. (who Stigman is, no one knows), whose owners at the time were the Vice President of JAT, Milan Zikelic, and a certain Mr. Vasilis Hristodoulou. This firm appeared as the seller of the airplanes before the Greek government. At the beginning of this year the Chief of Cabinet of the Minister of Defense of SR Yugoslavia, Gen.Maj. Borivoje Kovac, sent a letter to the Greek Ministry of Defense in which he gave power of attorney to a Belgrade arms merchant, permitting him to sign a contract of sale "for and on behalf of" the Ministry of Defense of SFRY. Gen. Kovac cordially, but energetically refused to comment for VREME regarding this matter, while the company Target, also cordially stated that it has no comments to make.

During all that time the planes have been staying from October 1995 at Airbase 112 of the Greek Air Force in Elephsinou, near Athens. They have been sitting their and rusting in the salty air carried in from the sea, because no one took proper precautions to conserve them when they were secretly flown in under the Czech flag across Salonika. At about the same time, in October of 1995, the Ministerial Council of Premier Andreas Papandreou approved their purchase, but only after the small deal (worth 24.4 million dollars) was agreed upon at the highest political level in a personal transaction between the Greek Premier and the Serbian President. Srefanos Tzumakas, one of the ministers of trade responsible, stated this fact in the Greek Parliament, probably unaware that he was making the first public connection to date between Milosevic and economic activities bordering on illegality. Minister Tzumakas, who along with the Minister of Defense, Akis Cohatzopoulos, of the new Greek government, is responsible for putting out fires, and also for purchasing airplanes for that purpose, stated that "because Greece was in the imminent danger of being accused of breaking sanctions" which were active during the closing of the deal, "the method of purchase through a middleman" was chosen. Defending himself in Parliament from accusations by the opposition that he was misusing state funds, Tzumakas added that the purchase was "guaranteed by two states". It is all the more surprising that the Ministry of Defense of SRY summoned the courage to get JAT in on a deal which was personally conducted by the President. However, it did happen, although at the last moment, so that the Yugoslav Chief of Cabinet of the Minister of Defense addressed his Greek colleagues, trying to explain to them that the planes are actually the property of the Yugoslav Ministry of Defense, and that the Ministry is the only one with the permission to sell them. However, the Greek Ministry ignored those signals, just as it ignored the many warnings from the Greek firm Defenco, which dealt with the Ministry of Defense of SRY and the company Target, and just as it ignored other official warning about the legal irregularity of the transaction and about the bad state of the planes. Thus the deal was closed in February of 1997: Greece bought four planes from the Cypriot company Stigman, all be it in bad condition, but with 13 spare engines and around 3,500 different spare parts.

SCANDAL: Then the Greek Opposition called the government to account because of misuse of state funds in a deal which was closed without any competitors, because the planes are in unusable condition, and above all because the registration papers of the planes are false. At the present there is danger that those papers could be repossessed because "it is possible that the planes still belong to the Ministry of Defense of former Yugoslavia, and not to the Greek businessman Vasilis Hristodoulou", as was concluded following the court’s investigation. The Greek Opposition is now stating that the Greek government, as the "purchaser of property accrued from criminal activities" — in other words, of property stolen from SFRY— could be forced do give compensation to states which are inheritors of the former SFRY, once the international court case is concluded.

WHERE IS THE MONEY?: One more doubtful point concerns the amount of money received by the seller — according to Greek sources, Serbia received only 16 million dollars, while the rest of the money was embezzled by various middlemen, including Serbian politicians tied in with the deal. The newspaper Avrijani states that the Athenian Ambassador of SRY, Milan Milutinovic, played a decisive role in the whole deal once it ground to a halt with the involvement of the Ministry of Defense of SRY. Other sources in Belgrade state that not even a single dollar has arrived from that whole questionable affair.

In the meantime other interesting developments have occurred: the Canadian company Bombardier, the manufacturer of Canadair, somehow found out about these wheeling and dealings and offered to sell to the Greek Government four refurbished planes of the same model, CL-215, but at a price of 14.7 million dollars. Having found out last week about that offer (the question is how?), the Greek Opposition raised appropriate questions: it accused Minister Tzumakas of not only buying property of questionable origins, but of buying it at a price far above the market value, and from questionable associates.

Guy Charpentier, the Chief of Sales of Canadair for Europe, as VREME found out, was very angry when he found out about that transaction: it seems that his company was intending to purchase those planes from SR Yugoslavia, in return for which it would deliver at least one smaller plane, a Falcon, because the airplanes owned by the federal government, Lear Jets, are outdated and too loud for international standards. In this way our merchants used planes belonging to someone else to enter not only the Greek market and that of the Yugoslav Military, but the market of a powerful corporation. Bombardier Aerospace Group North America has 37,000 employees, and an annual income of 5.9 billion dollars, and owns the De Havilland and Lear Jet companies, among others.

To the comment that with the public admission of this transaction the Greek government had compromised itself, one foreign diplomat in Athens merely laughed.

FUNNY BUSINESS: If there is anything new in the story about the Yugoslav "Canadairs", it is that this affair merely reflects the extent of Milosevic’s shady connections in Greece, and how high they reach in Greek political echelons. The airplanes are sitting in a Greek military base for a year and a half, and no one has said anything about it! On the other hand, when something was said, it was said by a Greek company dealing with the Ministry of Defense of Yugoslavia. The Bombardier Corp. also helped along matters, along with the owner of Canadair Co., while Milosevic’s old associates in Greece are detonating the whole affair. In the expectation of the conclusion to the Greek affair of the misuse of state funds, Greece has another ten Canadair airplanes to put out fires this summer, while the former Yugoslav Republics and SRY do not have a single one.