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Some Western observers also suspect that Vasiljevic helped purchase arms for the Serbian war effort. "Everyone here would say he's up to his neck in arms deals, though it's hard to prove," says a diplomat in Belgrade. Vasiljevic denies that charge too, and he has found some support among Westerners who note that the Serbs spent 40 years building their arsenals. "Most of what has been used in the field is stocks they had previously," says a Western diplomat who served in Belgrade. "I would classify Vasiljevic as a sanctions buster, but I can't say he was an arms importer."
Nonetheless, the banker's deals have helped prop up Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. When heating-oil supplies fell dangerously low last October, the banker loaned Belgrade $2.5 million to bolster the city's depleted reserves before winter. He now wants the loan repaid directly to Jugoskandik depositors.
Vasiljevic says he fled Yugoslavia to escape extortion threats from what he calls the "communist mafia regime" in Belgrade. He says the government demanded more than $1 million in taxes that he had already paid, and has since seized $31 million worth of gasoline that he owned. "I left the country to avoid paying blackmail to the communist country for use for war purposes," he says. Moreover, he adds, he wanted to blow the whistle on government demands that he purchase nearly $1 billion worth of missiles and other arms. "I don't want to take part in something that is very dirty," he says. "It's genocide, it's extermination of innocent people just to make money."
Stopping first in Budapest, Vasiljevic claims, he picked up $1 million of his own cash from a safe-deposit box and brought it in a suitcase to Israel. He went there, he says, to meet with lawyers and visit a Jerusalem youth village that has taken in Serbian refugees. He accuses the Milosevic government of looting $4.5 billion from Yugoslav depositors.
In Serbia, some jilted Jugoskandik customers have shown surprising sympathy + for the absent banker. "Jezda did not flee because of bankruptcy but for political reasons," says a member of the creditors' committee. "A lot of our money was given to the city of Belgrade and to Serbia. They should all return what they have."
For his part, Vasiljevic says, he looks back on his old life in Yugoslavia with few regrets. "I was on top of the pyramid there," he declares, "and I didn't want to be part of the pyramid anymore because I saw its purpose. It's not a war against Muslims. It's not a war against Croats. It's just a criminal war, a war of corruption." On that point at least, much of the rest of the world could agree.