After two judgments, one in favour of the Croatian bank and one in favour of NLB, became valid two years ago, the Slovenian-owned bank has lost two more substantial lawsuits in the last three months, and according to our information, the Croatian bank has already been paid a fairly substantial amount. Any official information on lost lawsuits has been so far impossible to obtain. All our efforts for information if the NLB was forced to pay a lost judgment in November last year have remained without answer from the bank and the Slovenian finance ministry.
All we know is information from unofficial but reliable sources. In the past two years, two lawsuits became final, one in favour of Croatia, the other in favour of the Slovenian bank. In both cases the reimbursement was small, a few hundred euros. In mid-November last year, NLB lost a much bigger lawsuit. The finance ministry then announced that the Zagreb County Court had issued a final ruling that NLB would have to pay the Croatian bank 492,000 euros together with interest and costs from 1 January 1992 onwards, which could result in three times the original amount. According to our unofficial information, this amount is rumoured to already have been deposited to the Croatian bank, and NLB is said to have lost another lawsuit of approximately 200,000 euros sometime during the past three months.
The government is looking for ways to protect the NLB
Since the proceedings before the Croatian courts are proceeding uninterrupted despite the Mokrice memorandum, it is expected that new final and, consequently, enforceable judgments will follow, so quite some panic is supposed to emerge at NLB and the Slovenian Ministry of Finance. After the idea of a state guarantee for potential lawsuits fell through last year, the government is now intensively looking for a model of how to protect the NLB that would be acceptable for the ruling Slovenian coalition. There are no solutions yet, but if a solution is found, this could, in turn, raise the expectations regarding the amount of the purchase price if NLB goes on sale.
