Croatians Queue for Long-Lost Slovenian Savings

In the corridor of the Zagreb office of Ljubljanska Banka on Wednesday, a crowd of mostly elderly people from all over Croatia waited to apply for the return of foreign account savings that they deposited more than 24 years ago.

But many of them claimed that they were not informed that the bank would start receiving applications to retrieve money from 'lost' saving accounts from Tuesday onwards.

More than 130,000 savers in Croatia and a similar number in Bosnia and Herzegovina are waiting for their money, which the bank has not returned since 1991, when it closed its operations in other Yugoslav republics after Slovenia declared independence.

Croatian savers alone are waiting for some 130 million euro plus interest.

Katarina, a 62-year-old pensioner from Zagreb, said she was happy that she will finally get the savings she inherited from her late husband.

"It's not a big sum, but it's mine. It will absolutely make a difference in my life, since I am a pensioner, and pensions are as they are - small," she told BIRN.

She said that she will receive her money within six months, adding with a smile that "the money will come just in time for one nice summer holiday".

But she insisted that Croatian savers were not properly informed about the application process.

"Purely by chance, on Sunday on Nova TV [a private Croatian station] news, in the subtitle on the bottom of the screen, I read that on December 1 it will all start," she said.

Another elderly man waiting for his wife in front of the office, who asked to remain anonymous, told BIRN that the whole process was not transparent and former clients had not been properly informed.

"After 25 year of stalling with our money, is this is the way to treat us?" he...