Slovenia’s dominant media was not interested in the news from Brussels when the European Commission granted seven European countries a package of state aid at the end of December last year to develop a new generation of lithium-ion batteries.
There are seven EU Member States on this train of the future, namely Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Finland and Sweden, which have agreed to provide up to EUR 3.2 billion from national budgets to support lithium-ion batteries research and development, the consortium includes 17 different companies, which will add another 5 billion euros to this development. Europe in this area lags behind Asia, which currently produces about 80 percent of the total world production of batteries for electric cars, in Europe only about three percent. The European Commission and seven countries are aware of this backlog, while being aware of the urgency and potential of mobility and clean energy.
All state aid must be approved by the European Commission and the difference between what a serious state’s application is and what post-communist Slovenia is asking for, is huge. Normal EU countries are seeking permission to intervene with government subsidies in cases of development and new added value, that is important for the country, society, environment, businesses, for progress. In Slovenia, we ask the Commission for permits so that we can rehabilitate the banks destroyed by the greed of the tycoon elite. For the rehabilitation of banks, therefore, where politics set up the leadership of banks and where political bankers distributed loans by political directory to their political counterparts. And these loans did not have to be repaid. The cost to repair the stranded banks is close to six billion euros. The tycoon Factor Bank and Probanka Bratuskova sent into liquidation, billed by her government to taxpayers. The same applies to NLB, NKBM, Abanka and Banka Celje, for which we paid an even higher tax, and bad loans landed on the bad bank and the brokerage bank.
The decision to keep state-owned banks as long as possible owned by state was, of course, a political one. In the past, Ljubljanska Banka was a cash register, and later NLB became a 24/7 ATM of the transition elite. In the years 2008-2013 alone, with multiple recapitalisations, which were necessary to prevent this state bank from going bankrupt, we gave 2.7 billion euros of state budget money. But the existence of the NLB was obviously also necessary for confidential and well-planned international financial operations, such as the laundering of Iranian money in 2009 and 2010. So, at the time when the taxpayers in good faith rehabilitated this bank, the bank with the consent of the top left political elites, our secret police, criminal police and the Office for the prevention of money laundry, have conducted extensive operations to launder Iranian money, which is likely to have been completed by some to finance terrorist activities. All this was happening at a time when the embargo on business with Iran and Iranian banks was in force, the embargo was enforced by the US and the European Union, with special resolutions Iran also sought to bring the UN into account. Only in Slovenia did we that at the bank, which we taxpayers kept alive and help keep the criminal regime in Iran alive. Only Slovenia within the EU was the one country that boasted of this embargo. In doing so, it defiled its international reputation, but the predatory elite did not care for the country’s reputation. Slovenia has never been their intimate option. Their only concern is how to satiate greed for wealth, for themselves and for their descendants.
Recent events in Iran have also aroused this affair and, ten years later, have become more intensely interested in the effects of this laundered bill. There is no will for us to investigate banking crime, the biggest bank thieves are just accumulating wealth, because of money laundering, some NLB employees have been rewarded, and criminals have not seen anything wrong with bankers. Abroad, especially the United States is interested in the network that has laundered billions of euros of Iranian money into the NLB, so our bank thieves are not yet on the safe side. Their care is justified.
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Abroad, especially the United States is interested in the network that has laundered billion of euros of Iranian money into the NLB, so our bank thieves are not yet on the safe side. Their care is justified.