DIKO chairman Tassos Papadopoulos yesterday denied any links to Borislav Milosevic, brother of the former Yugoslav president and genocide suspect Slobodan Milosevic, attributing recent local media reports to a deliberate campaign aimed at smearing his image ahead of the upcoming presidential elections.
Speculation on Cypriot involvement in the transfer of millions of dollars out of Serbia into foreign banks has raged for years. An International War Crimes Tribunal probe headed by Morten Torkildsen has found that the funds siphoned out of Serbia were used for financing Bosnian Serb militias. Torkildsen reported that the money had been sent to accounts managed by the offshore branch offices of the Belgrade-based Beogradska Banka in Cyprus.
The Governor of the Yugoslav Central Bank believes four billion dollars in various currencies left Yugoslavia between 1992 and 1994. For his part, Torkildsen has described Cyprus as the centre of the alleged money-laundering network directed by the former Yugoslav head of state.
Local TV channel Ant1 recently featured a story on Neocom Trading Ltd, an offshore company named in Torkildsen’s report. The TV station had followed up on an article appearing in Belgian newspaper Le Soir. According to Ant1, a number of Papadopoulos’ associates were sitting on Neocom’s board of directors for some time.
On Thursday, Papadopoulos’ law office issued a statement saying that in October 1997 it had been asked by Borislav Milosevic to make arrangements for setting up Neocom as an offshore company in Cyprus. Other than that, the announcement read, the law firm had nothing to do with the company’s activities, Milosevic’s brother or any of his associates. All of its associates had withdrawn from Neocom’s board as soon as that company was set up, it said.
A spokesman for Tassos Papadopoulos & Co said yesterday the firm had followed all legal procedures, adding that it could not be held responsible for any possible subsequent suspect activities by the offshore company.
The law firm went on to describe Ant1’s news bulletin story as a “fabrication”, evidently suggesting this was part of a smear campaign against Papadopoulos, slated as one of the candidates for the next presidential elections.
Neocom was set up as an offshore company on the island two years after the United Nations imposed an embargo against Yugoslavia. The Republic of Cyprus officially adopted the embargo from the outset.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
