February 23, 2006
For Immediate Release:
Jonathan Levy and Tom Easton Attorneys
202-318-2406
http://www.vaticanbankclaims.com
Current Update
Vatican Bank Lawsuit Progressing
San Francisco: Attorneys for plaintiffs in Alperin v. Vatican Bank a lawsuit seeking recovery of assets looted from Yugoslavia during the Second World War and converted post war by the Vatican Bank and Franciscan Order reports progress on several fronts:
The trial court has approved a Fourth Amended Lawsuit that substantially enhances the existing claims and adds the Serbian Republic of Krajina in Exile as a Plaintiff. Additional facts about how the Ustasha Treasury came to the Vatican Bank, Vatican dealings in gold bullion and the involvement of the Franciscan Order in Rome and Chicago have been added.
The deposition of the only known witness to the Vatican and Franciscan money laundering, former Army Counterintelligence Special Agent William Gowen is set to continue in Dallas on March 9, 2006. Gowen's eyewitness testimony has revealed so far that Vatican official Fr. Krunoslav Draganovic admitted to Gowen that he received up to ten truckloads of loot in 1946 at the Franciscan controlled Croatian Confraternity of San Girolamo. Gowen also testified that the leader of the treasure convoy, Ustasha Colonel Ivan Babic, boasted to Gowen of using British uniforms and trucks to move the gold from Northern Italy to Rome. As for the Ustasha Treasury's ultimate destination, Gowen concurred that it could have gone nowhere but the Vatican bank.
Gowen's testimony is likely to remain unchallenged by any living witness given the recent death of former longtime Vatican Bank President, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, who likely knew of the Ustasha transaction but never spoke of it.
Further the United States Supreme Court has denied a Vatican Bank and Franciscan Appeal to halt the lawsuit. The US State Department has also denied previous requests by the Vatican Secretariat to dismiss the lawsuit.
For more information contact:
Jonathan Levy, Esq.
202-318-2406
The move is more in the function of winning votes in the election campaign and of populist yielding to part of the electorate, Seks said, adding that he was against the decision.
He wondered what was the purpose of giving Italian citizenship to ethnic Italians who enjoy all the rights provided by Croatian citizenship and thus putting them in a position of "divided loyalty".
Seks said Italy's unilateral decision was not the European way and future, and that there was a "hidden agenda" behind it.
He refused to link this issue with that of dual citizenship enjoyed by Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, saying that Croatia bound itself by its Constitution to give special support to parts of the Bosnian Croat people.
Seks said that Croatia and Bosnia would regulate the acquisition of citizenship with an interstate agreement which would follow European endeavours to have people have only one citizenship.
He underlined that those already enjoying dual citizenship would not lose it but in the future citizenship would be granted only based on actual residence in a country.
Seks went on to say that the Croatian parliament would adequately react to Italy's decision on its economic belt in the Adriatic, which he added was unilateral. He said the Sabor was waiting for the government's position on the matter.
In late January, the Italian Senate passed a law declaring the ecological part of Italy's economic belt. Croatia unilaterally did the same in October 2003, but the following June, after pressure from Italy, postponed its application for 12 months for EU member states.
Seks confirmed that compensation for property seized from Austrian citizens in Croatia would not be settled by ratifying an already initialled agreement, but by amending the law on compensation for property seized during Yugoslavia's communist rule, namely by equating foreign and Croatian citizens.
Seks said the amendments were expected to be tackled by the summer and would render it unnecessary to sign bilateral agreements with individual countries. The issue will be settled on the level of protocol, as a technical issue, he added.
Seks said this would likely not cost the national budget much because the number of people qualifying for compensation was not high, and added the compensation would be paid over a longer period of time.
Seks said Austria attached importance to honouring the Croatian-Austrian damages agreement and less to how the issue was going to be settled in the legal and technical sense.
In a press release today, the Slovene Foreign Ministry said that the amendments to the Italian citizenship law were not in accordance with the Osimo accords. Under the amendments, citizenship might be granted to Croatian and Slovene citizens living in parts of Croatia and Slovenia which were under Italian rule until Italy and the former Socialist Yugoslavia reached a peace treaty after WWII.
Ljubljana cannot comment on the amended law because it has not been issued yet and has yet to be formally confirmed by President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, read the press release.
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The two officials discussed, among other things, the only outstanding issue between the two countries, that of compensation for Austrian nationals who fled Croatia after WWII, which recently caused heated debates in Croatia.
The Croatian and Austrian governments last year initialled a bilateral agreement on compensation for exiled Austrian citizens, but after President Stjepan Mesic, opposition parties and the public criticised the agreement, the government gave up on its plan to have it ratified by the parliament.
The Croatian state leadership agreed instead to change the law on denationalisation to solve the problem of Austrian citizens.
We expect the content of the agreement to be implemented and the technicalities of the issue are not important, Fischer said. It is irrelevant if this is done through an agreement or an amendment to the law, he said.
"Expert teams have solved the issue in talks with President Stjepan Mesic and Prime Minister Ivo Sanader and I believe that conditions have been created for the Sabor to adopt amendments to the law in the foreseeable future, which will be followed by certain protocols to regulate the problem at the technical level," Sabor Speaker Seks said, adding that the amendments were expected to be adopted by the summer.
The amending of the law on denationalisation does not require the absolute but only relative majority. According to some reports, Croatia can expect about 1,000 requests for compensation from Austria.
Fischer and Seks also discussed the further enlargement of the European Union and Croatia's full membership of the bloc.
Before he returns to Zagreb today Seks will also meet representatives of the Burgenland Croats.
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