Panic in the successor party of the League of Communists of Slovenia, the Social Democrats, is growing. Minister of the Interior, Aleš Hojs, ordered the revisions of certain criminal investigation proceedings from the past, which ended without an epilogue. One of such cases is also the investigation of the bank hole and laundering of Iranian money through Nova ljubljanska banka, in which the Social Democrats are heavily involved, as the majority of the illegal transactions through the NLB happened during the time of Pahor’s government.
Therefore, they are using all legal and media manoeuvres they can think of, to publicly smear the Minister of the Interior Aleš Hojs’ reputation and portray his request as illegal. Among other things, they asked the Ministry of the Interior, the National Bureau of Investigation and the State Prosecutor’s Office for a written confirmation of Aleš Hojs’ request. “We are convinced that such a document does not exist, which is further evidence of the crime committed by Minister Hojs. According to the constitution, only the state prosecutor has the power to direct individual police proceedings. No one else. Not even Aleš Hojs,” the Social Democrats responded publicly. Their staff, however, are directly or indirectly involved in all the investigations for which the revisions were ordered, which is why Tanja Fajon and her red companions’ fear is all the more understandable.
The Social Democrats’ fear is very understandable, as they are afraid of the new results of the revisions, which would not be favourable to them. Their deep involvement in the laundering of Iranian money in the NLB, in addition to the fact that some of their tycoons were surely among the “diggers” of the bank hole, was already proven by the parliamentary investigations, and the final reports were unanimously accepted. However, the politically oriented police and the prosecution halted the proceedings, saying they were not in dispute.
The SD party and Iran have long-standing “strategic” relations
It is worth mentioning that the ties between the Iranian and the communist (ancestors of the SD party) regime were already established by the UDBA network during the time of socialist Yugoslavia. This was revealed to the Slovenian public by the economist and archive researcher Rado Pezdir – the roots of the Irangate affair go all the way back to the former regime. The affair returned to the Slovenian scene between 2009 and 2011 when the Iranian citizen Iraj Farrokhzadeh opened accounts and transferred money through his offshore companies, which were based in tax havens, in order to finance terrorism and the proliferation of a nuclear warfare programme in Iran. Among others, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Superman received the money transfers to their bank accounts.
All of this was happening during the Social Democrats government’s term, under the leadership of the current President of the Republic Borut Pahor. The field of banking was taken over by the then-Minister of Finance from the SD party France Križanič and the long-time member of the deep state and executor of UDBA’s secret actions during the times of the totalitarian Yugoslavia, Dragan Isajlović. In the entire story of Iranian money laundering, the strangest thing is that it was actually detected by the Office for Money Laundering Prevention, Slovene Intelligence and Security Agency, the supervisory bodies in NLB and the Bank of Slovenia, the National Bureau of Investigation, the State Prosecutor’s Office, the Ministry of Finance, and the then-Prime Minister Borut Pahor’s office, but they all swept the matter under the rug.
The acting President of the SD party continues to nurture the relations with the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism
In all this, it is even more telling that the acting president of the SD party Tanja Fajon recently met with the Iranian Ambassador Kazem Shafei. Among other things, she also shared the following statement with the public: “The Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran Kazem Shafei and I discussing our views on the current situation, in my office of the European Parliament. He informed me about the challenges of respecting the 2015 nuclear deal after the United States announced its withdrawal. The EU is doing all it can to maintain the agreement.” Along with the message, she also posted a picture of her with the Iranian ambassador. However, everyone knows that conversations about sensitive topics are never shared with the public.
In all of this, it is even more interesting that virtually all democratic countries are distancing themselves from Iran, the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism, with only the successor of the League of Communists continuing to nurture their long-standing relations. So what do Fajon and the Iranian regime have in common, when it is well-known that the two countries have practically nothing in common? The answer can only be: money!
Luka Perš