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U.N. Report
By Betsy PisikPublished February 9, 2004
Kosovo laws updated
Transnational crime analysts for years have been looking at the Balkans with dismay, wondering how to slow the traffic on its smugglers' superhighway.
So it was good news when the U.N. Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) issued a regulation on Friday that requires banks, nongovernmental organizations, political parties and any entity that handles large amounts of cash to report transactions to UNMIK's new Financial Information Center.
"This is a major step forward, a powerful tool that we have to fight money laundering -- and by implication, penetration of the economy -- by organized crime," Jean-Christian Cady, the acting head of UNMIK, said in Pristina on Friday.
The new rules, which take effect March 1, are necessary, said Harri Holkeri, the special representative of the U.N. secretary-general in Kosovo and de facto leader in Pristina.
"The Balkans are east of the West and west of the East," Mr. Holkeri, a Finn, said in an interview Friday after briefing the U.N. Security Council on the situation in Kosovo. "It's a smuggling route, a trafficking route, for everything ... money, people, cars."
If the new rules are enforced, it would set Kosovo above scores of countries in terms of financial transparency and accountability -- two qualities that asset-shelterers hate. It's not yet clear whether Kosovo eventually will become a sovereign state or return to being a mainly Muslim province in mostly Christian Serbia.
Belgrade has made it plain that it will not tolerate losing Kosovo, and Kosovars are equally intractable about returning to their old status.
The failure of the international community to decide Kosovo's fate remains a problem, Mr. Holkeri told The Washington Times. The United Nations has administered Kosovo since June 1999.
"This final status is the biggest thing for everyone," he said, "but the question itself is totally in the hands of the Security Council."
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