ZAGREB, Dec 12 (Hina) - About 30 members of the Franak association, which gathers together people with loans denominated in Swiss francs, blocked the Raiffeisenbank (RBA) office and the Hypo-Alpe-Adria-Bank (HAAB) office in central Zagreb on Saturday morning, and the association's coordinator Goran Aleksic said it was time for the Croatian National Bank (HNB) to consider revoking HAAB's operating licence.
Franak said it was blocking the RBA and HAAB offices because of irregularities in the conversion of CHF loans into euro-denominated loans. A Sberbank office was paralysed in a similar way a few days ago when Franak's activists obstructed the bank's work by paying small amounts of money into their accounts and asking questions about the conversion.
Franak said that the blockade of the two banks would last several hours.
"RBA and Sberbank have announced certain improvements, while Hypo Bank remains the worst. It's the only bank that refuses to remove an annex saying that in case the Constitutional Court declares the relevant laws unconstitutional the annex will become null and void. Hypo Bank is the only one that refuses to delete this from the annex. That's why it's high time that the HNB considered revoking this bank's operating licence, which is possible under the Credit Institutions Act," Aleksic said.
Iva Tadic, a client of RBA, said that after numerous complaints to the central bank, RBA agreed on Friday to review its loan conversion scheme and lower the initially calculated interest rate to that for euro loans taken at the same time as CHF loans.
(Hina) vm