Money Or Life

Shortly afterwards there was a shoot-out in the seat of the "Dafiment Bank" (Genex Apartments B 10). One man was killed, another three were wounded. The "Dafiment Bank" issued an announcement, while the police took a long while to establish the victim's identity....only to finally determine that the incident was caused by dismissal notices delivered to some security guards of the "Dafiment Bank."

And, in the end, on Thursday, April 8, VREME's sources close to the state's financial top reported that Dafina Milanovic did manage, after all, to obtain a large amount of dinars (several hundred billion), but under rather unfavourable conditions - at a 23 per cent monthly interest rate in addition to a hard currency deposit to the vault of the National Bank of Serbia.

Whatever has been said above by no means implies that "the first of all Serbs" approved the money for Dafina because of the shoot-out and one casualty (Cyrus Vance noticed earlier that Milosevic thinks in "big numbers"). It seems that the events happened to coincide on this occasion, and that the Topcider "money factory" was activated for other, much more prosaic reasons. One of the reasons might be the President's assessment of Dafina's reserves, which was wrong, or the fact that those reserves had melted in the meantime. The number of the savings account holders at the Dafina's considered, this would suffice for activating the "logic of big numbers" in the President's head, so that he starts thinking about the consequences and more serious shoot-outs, and, then, says "yes" to yet another plea of the biggest local banker.

Nevertheless, according to the first reports there is a connection between the shoot-out and the money, but on a much lower level. According to one version, the Dafina's security people resorted to arms because of dismissal notices. Some of them received a notice after having been caught letting the depositors into the bank at a provision of 100 to 200DM, depending on their deposits.

According to another version, everything started when a few security guards refused to return the money which had been confiscated from one depositor. It was all about 20,000DM which the depositor withdrew by using force as well - he had drawn a hand grenade, threatening to activate it unless he was paid all the deposited money.

The third version boils down to a classic cowboy movie dilemma "money or life". According to this version, the fired security quards went to the Genex Apartment B 10 to collect their deposits aided with weapons, and, naturally, everything ended with shooting.

Former member of Dafina Milanovic's personal security, Vladimir Ilic was killed in the clash, while Milan Colakovic, Darko Davidovic, Muzafer Dostanic and Danilo Milanovic, also former and current members of the bank's security, were wounded. Another three protagonists in the clash took flight. Ilic's death was ascribed to them for now, and the police indicated that it will issue a central wanted list, if it fails to trace them by April 8.

It is interesting that when asked the names of fugitives, Dobrivoje Gerasimovic, the judge who is in charge of the investigation, replied, "We would do them a favour if we announced their names."

All in all, the investigation authorities have no reason to boast about the case. Although the bank remained blocked for two hours after the shoot-out, none of the officials for the whole day managed to find out the name of the man killed in the clash. This information made the family of Vladimir Ilic suspicious. His father publicly demanded an explanation since his son's identification papers had remained in the bank after the shooting, and insisted that it was impossible that he was not immediately identified. The "Dafiment Bank" did not do much either, at least publicly, to shed light on the case, although the Investigation Judge Gerasimovic claimed that "Dafina personally was very helpful in the investigation." Namely, the Bank only issued a brief announcement.

Many things have remained unclear to the public. For example, did the three fugitives defend of attack the Bank? Even if it is true that Vladimir Ilic who was killed came to the Bank to settle accounts with the new security guards, or to withdraw his money by using force, it is still not clear who killed him. The new security guards of his friends in all-out shooting?

None of these matters was announced, nor was any of the participants in the shooting taken into custody, which is surprising. The only culprits so far are the three fugitives, who are officially listed in the file as "the participants in the clash."

Both officially and unofficially, the shooting in the apartment B 10 lasted a few minutes. CZ 99 guns, with 15 bullets in a magazine and one in a barrel, were primarily used. Five cartridges (from the "ninety-five") were found on the site. But, it is assumed that many more shots were fired since the colts, which do not release cartridges, were also fired from. It can be deduced from all the announcements that Ilic and Milan Colakovic were on the same side. Ilic's father told the journalists that his son had been killed while protection Colakovic and that he was not armed.

Colakovic, who was still in intensive care on Thursday (having suffered head and groin injuries), was, when all things are taken into consideration, the leader of the group which arrived at the "Dafiment Bank." Until recently he had been the head of the Bank's entire security. Some bank officials claim that Colakovic had received a flat from Dafina Milanovic for his good services.

The journalists managed to find out that Colakovic entered the Bank with two guns in his hands, to which Zoran Ivancevic, the new head of the Dafiment security, responded by pulling out his gun. It is also assumed that Ivancevic did not fire, but someone on his team. But, the whole story ends with these assumptions.

It turned out after the shoot-out that some of these injured were on the police records, dating way back (some of them are also on the wanted list). Nevertheless, all of them (which is a rule at the Dafina's) had permissions for carrying fire-arms, which were issued in a regular procedure. Is someone from the Belgrade police to be blamed for the fact, or may the permissions have been issued to the people in Dafina's security in one of the Serb Republics over the Drina River (the police has recently confiscated the fire-arms of Zeljko Raznjatovic-Arkan's people, whose permissions were issued in the above mentioned way)? All this is yet to be seen.

Dafina Milanovic stated afterwards that she did not wish to speak before the investigation was over. She also expressed belief that the clash is a consequence of certain cuts in the security, which were made after she had discovered that some security guards take money for letting people into the bank.

In the end, her version, that it was the clash of good and bad guys from her security over money, will most likely be accepted as the official version as well.

The security guards may have taken a handsome provision from the bank's savings account holders, but that is still trivial compared to the money which flows through this financial empire in one way or another. It is also well known that it is not the security guards who are in charge of withdrawal of the largest deposits, but much stronger players whose provision is significantly higher, reaching up to 20 per cent of the deposit.

And, to return to the event which took place while the public talked about the unfortunate shoot-out in the Genex Apartments - Milosevic's "yes" to Dafina's plea and the accelerated printing of money at the Mint - one might say that he is still in control. DM went up, which means that Dafina has started to turn over the money from the state till, and the state itself has no reason not to be happy. Should Dafina fail to return the borrowed money, the state is left with a hard currency deposit. The unfortunate Vladimir Ilic, whoever he may be, will soon be forgotten. The one to be remembered have always been those who dealt with big numbers, regardless of what this numbers referred to.

Death

After the armed conflict on the premises of the Dafiment Bank had taken place, the public was informed that similar incidents had occurred before. It was learned that several people had a narrow escape when the security guards played with their guns, got carried away and started to shoot. But, the most tragic incident took place on March 31, when a security guard pushed back Stevan Mucalov, a pensioner, who fell, hitting his head against the concrete. On April 6, Mucalov succumbed to the injuries caused by the fall, and, the security guard, as it has been learned, came under arrest.