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The death of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevich in his jail in The Hague (11 March 2006) left his trial incomplete and thus plenty of questions in “shadow”.

Slobodan Milosevich, also known as the “Serbian (Human) Butcher” was responsible for the murder of thousands of civilians during the war which broke out in Yugoslavia and spred into the Balkans during 1990s.

Milosevich was taken to court in his country since he got advantage of the chaos in those days and smuggled 4.2 billion US dollars deposited in the banks in Serbia to overseas, in collaboration with his family members.

Milosevich was arrested in his country with the accusation of “impropriety and smuggling” in 2001, who was later taken to the Former Yugoslavian War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague where his trial was continuing since 2003. He was accused of “Crimes against humanity” which also involved his crimes of money laundering.

We had read plenty of news about the relationship between Slobodan Milosevich and the Greek Cypriot Leader Tassos Papadopoulos, and that the money smuggled from Serbia had been laundered in Southern Cyprus, in 1990s...

Interesting reports about these issues not only took place in international press but in the Greek Cypriot press, also.

It is well known that, only a few days before Milosevich passed away, the Serbian President Boris Tadich visited Tassos Papadopoulos and asked for the return of his country’s capital...

During the same period Tadich was in Southern Cyprus, a letter by the opposition leader Vladan Batich was published in the Serbian press in which Tadich put forward that 1.7 billion US dollars had been taken from Serbia to the Beogratska Bank in the south, later to be transferred to the off-shore company called Antexol, which was founded and owned by Tassos Papadopoulos, who was instantly a lawyer.

The black money laundering relationship of Milosevich and Papadopoulos was mentioned in numerous international reports...

In his report publihed in Financial Times on 25 June 2002, Investigator at the United Nations War Crimes Prosecutor’s Office, Morten Torkildsen stated that Milosevich, used Southern Cyprus as an “international money laundering centre” in order to break the UN embargoes imposed upon the former Yugoslavia.

According to this report, Milosevich’s brothers appeared to be shareholders of certain off-shore companies which were registered by Tassos Papadopoulos’s Law Bureau and through these companies the money stolen from Serbia were transferred to a bank in Southern Cyprus.

The so-called off-shore companies provided fuel, raw materials, spare parts and weapons to Milosevich’s government during the onslaughts which took place in 1992-1996 in Bosnia and 1998-1999 in Kosovo.

In another way of money laundering, Milosevich’s relatives smuggled 1.1 million US dollars worth gold to Switzerland and the money attained from the sales of the gold was transferred to the deposits in various banks in Southern Cyprus.

The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Carla Del Ponte, expressed in her report to the International War Crimes Tribunal, that Milosevich laundered money through 8 off-shore companies in Southern Cyprus, and that two of them namely “Aviatrend” and “Neocom” were verified by Interpol as arms smugglers.

Del Ponte also added that, “Neocom” which belongs to Milosevich’s brother was notified by CIA as registered to Tassos Papadopoulos’s Law Bureau, in 1997. This was the way these companies acquired legitimacy.

Tassos Papadopoulos is currently the “President of the Republic of Cyprus”, which is a member of the EU.

Papadopoulos’s ties with Milosevich and the money told is being seriously discussed in the Cyprus press.

Loucas Charalambos, in his report entitled “Taking Serbian people for a ride” published in Sunday Mail newspaper on 12 March 2006 and in Cyprus Dialogue on 17 March 2006, took notes from Torkildsen’s report and stated that; Papadopoulos, Central Bank, Attorney General and the Ministry of Finance in the Greek Cypriot administration have organised a chain of crime and lies in order to seize the money.

Won’t the EU and the UN clarify these illegal activities, that have been brought up by these documents and reports?