You close your bank account, and suddenly it is resurrected.
This is exactly what happened to several citizens with whom the editorial staff of "Vremena" spoke.
"I opened an account in Direktna banka in order to transfer to myself the money I had left after the probate hearing and closed it immediately after, although they assured me that there was no need because the maintenance would not be paid for a year or two," the citizen, whose name is known to the editors, told "Vreme". "They were very persistent about it, but I still insisted to close the account, not to think about it." I did all that in the seventh month of pregnancy."
The banker recognized me, it was embarrassing
Then they called her more than a year later, to settle the account maintenance obligations. The banker assured her that she had not closed the account.
"It wasn't a big sum, less than 1.000 dinars, but I couldn't believe it." It turned out that the woman at the counter recognized me because she was doing my closing and remembered that I was pregnant. She just told me - go, I will close everything, I guess she was ashamed", adds the citizen.
A similar thing happened to another consumer, who had an account in Direktna Bank for the company, which he closed in the meantime. When he was contacted by the state administration to pay him a certain overpayment in taxes to that same account, it turned out that the account was still active, even though he had no maintenance debt.
It suited him to leave the account until he "draws a line with the state", but it was completely unclear to him that the bank did not close the account, even though he asked them to do so.
Eurobank Direktna banka told "Vreme" that "so far, they have had no complaints from clients, including those clients who came from Direktna banka, that their account was not closed upon request."
"According to the procedures of Eurobank Direktna Bank, the process of closing the accounts of natural persons is such that the client's account is closed exclusively in the personal presence of the client." The client also receives a confirmation of the closed account, and the second copy of that confirmation is kept in the bank's system," the bank added.
To spoil clients
From the Association of Effective, which deals with the protection of users of financial services, they say that they have already noticed this phenomenon at this and some other banks.
"Banks resort to this specific decision when they need it in order to have as many clients as possible on paper," says Dejan Gavrilović from Ektefera for "Vreme". "If there is no debt for clients, it's not that much of a problem directly, but it's very big if they have to pay to maintain that account." Also, in those situations, banks often ask their clients to show them the paper that they have closed the account, and I wonder who keeps it."
Why
In 2023, AIK Bank informed the public that a purchase and sale agreement was signed on the takeover of Eurobank Direktna banka.
Before Eurobank, Alfa Banka sold its subsidiaries in Serbia, also to AIK Banka, and Piraeus Banka sold its business in Serbia to Direktna Banka for EUR 58 million.
Before the sale of its business, Eurobanka in Serbia first merged with Direktna banka, which was owned by two Serbian businessmen, Andrej Jovanović and Bojan Milovanović. In 2016, they bought the failing Kredi Bank from the then owners of the Slovenian KBM Bank.
They shone in the business sky of Serbia at one time by selling the snack factory Marbo to Pepsi for 210 million euros, "Danas" wrote.
AIK Bank, whose nominal owner is the Cypriot company Agri Europe, was owned by the well-known businessman Miodrag Kostić, who died in 2024, and who was recognizable for his deals with the state in an, to put it mildly, unusual manner.
He was the first to build a wind farm in Serbia, when foreigners could not do it, due to bank guarantees that were dizzying at the time, but Kostić had the opportunity - because he had his own bank.
