October 21 (SeeNews) - Slovenia had filed a lawsuit against Croatia in the European Court of Human Rights over the debt, which the Zagreb-based subsidiary of Slovenia's Ljubljanska banka failed to recover from Croatian companies following the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, the court said.
The lawsuit lodged on September 15 concerns the conduct of the judicial and executive authorities of Croatia in relation to the assets and the receivables of Ljubljanska banka d.d., a joint stock company incorporated under Slovenian law, and its branch Ljubljanska banka in Zagreb, in the context of the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, the court said in a statement on Thursday.
Slovenia is seeking at least 360 million euro ($391.9 million) in damages, according to local media reports.
According to the Slovenian government, between 1991 and 1996 Ljubljanska banka and its Zagreb branch brought proceedings before Croatian courts against a number of Croatian companies, seeking the repayment of debts contracted in the former Yugoslavia, mainly in the 1980s.
"As of 1994, over 80 such legal cases were pending before Croatian courts; the present application before the Court covers 26 cases. Some of them are still pending, some others have ended in judgments denying Ljubljanska banka an effective locus standi before the Croatian courts; finally, in some other cases, the judgments favourable to the bank could never be enforced," the European Court of Human Rights noted.
Slovenia alleges multiple violations of right right to a fair trial, including denial of its right to appear before the court and address it in the respective proceedings; unreasonable length of proceedings, a violation of the right to an impartial and independent tribunal, and impossibility to obtain the enforcement of final judgements in many cases.
The dispute over Ljubljanska banka stems from the break-up of the former Yugoslavia when a new bank, Nova Ljubljanska Banka, was formed and Croatian depositors in LB received no compensation.
In 2014, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Slovenia needed to compensate the savers. Although it put in place a compensation mechanism, Slovenia claimed that Croatian companies owed money to LB which it was unable to recover since the bank's licence was revoked in Croatia.