May 2021 - BIRD

Balkan Investors Join Crypto Trading Craze

Posted on May 31, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Stefan Angelovski starts his day with a cup of coffee and a browse online at which cryptocurrencies to buy and which to sell.

The 33-year-old former fitness trainer in Skopje, capital of North Macedonia, has been trading in cryptocurrency since 2017. Recently, he went full-time.

“I start and end most of my days following the crypto market trends and the daily transactions I make,” said Angelovski. “While I’ve been in this for a while, I’m now finally beginning to be satisfied with what I’ve achieved.”

The global cryptocurrency market has been going through a turbulent time in recent days, with losses estimated at more than 1.3 trillion dollars since a market peak on May 12. But in the Balkans, things are just heating up.

Local media, for example, have reported a 130 per cent increase in crypto trading in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 2019 and 2020, mirroring the global trend in which popular exchanges such as Coinbase have seen their user numbers jump from 35 million in 2020 to 56 million in the first quarter of 2021.

“I think that banks and the banking system are like dinosaurs waiting to die, and it is always a good time to enter the crypto market,” said Angelovski.

The Elon Musk effect

Stefan Angelovski. Photo: BIRN

Angelovski began in 2017 with an initial investment of just $250.

He says he has made most of his money in the past six months, when the prices of popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum skyrocketed.

Bitcoin’s limited supply of 21 million makes it a scarce digital asset, earning it the moniker “digital gold”. Ethereum, on the other hand, is valued for its advanced blockchain technology and the faster transaction times it offers.

But there are thousands of others cryptocurrencies to buy and, as of February 2021, more than 68 million blockchain wallet users where the crypto is stored.

In the Balkans, so-called alternative coins, or altcoins, such as Dogecoin, are becoming increasingly popular.

Originally starting out as a meme coin in 2013 to poke fun at cryptocurrencies and people investing in something they might know very little about, this year its pricesurged by more than 12,000 per cent, meaning someone who invested $1,000 in January made a profit of more than $100,000 by May. The coin tumbled in value to 29 cents following the recent crash in the crypto market.

And while the rise of Bitcoin and Ethereum is based on the success of the blockchain technologies that they are based on, the popularity of Dogecoin is down to the speculative nature of the market, as well as praise from prominent supporters such as Tesla CEO and billionaire businessman Elon Musk.

How does it all work?

To buy and sell crypto on apps like Binance, a user must register a profile with an ID or passport and can then use a debit or credit card to buy from the listed cryptocurrencies and trade in them. Users can swap one crypto for another, or convert them into fiat currencies such as dollars, euros or pounds.

Popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin can also be spent via Bitcoin debit cards, which can be used online or wherever credit cards are accepted. People can also buy crypto from specialised cryptocurrency ATMs, using cards or cash, and scan the code of the required cryptocurrency so that it can be transferred to the mobile wallet where crypto are kept.

When it comes to cashing the profits made from trading cryptocurrencies, there are several ways that this can be done in the Balkans, including selling directly to interested traders for cash, or through intermediaries such as cryptocurrencies exchange offices like the BCX exchange platform in Serbia.

Elena Pupkova, a Skopje-based bookmaker, is one who hopes to cash in on the current Dogecoin craze.

“I became interested in investing in crypto a few months ago,” Pupkova said.“After I read some news that American Citibank is building a crypto trading service, and of course tweets from Elon Musk – the biggest promoter of cryptocurrencies, that was the last step that drew me to invest in crypto.”

“I also have a friend who invested in Bitcoin four years ago, and now she has more than $250,000. If I was sceptical about it then, I’m not anymore.”

Darko Ivanovski, a 33-year-old search engine specialist, first heard of Dogecoin in 2013, but, given the volatility of the market, prefers to invest in better-known currencies such as Bitcoin

“I think that it is much wiser to invest in cryptocurrencies that are known to be more expensive because you know that it is not so easy for them to collapse,” he told BIRN. “For example, it would definitely better to buy 0.0001 Bitcoin, rather than 200 XRP (Ripple cryptocurrency) that no one knows about.”

According to Vlaho Hrdalo, chairman of the Croatian Association for Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies, UBIK, while altcoins arenot necessarily bad, they tend to prey on what he describes as the “get-rich-quick-with-us-if-you’ve-missed-out-on-previous-pumpcoin.”

“As for the outlandish projects, they are often the result of the bull run and not its cause,” said Hrdalo. “In the long run I don’t expect every dog-themed coin to survive, but don’t underestimate them because look what happened with Dogecoin, which everyone thought couldn’t stay afloat during the bear market.”

Money-spinner or world-changer?

Illustration: Pixabay

Besides trading, there’s mining too, whereby people use computers and graphic cards to solve cryptographic equations and earn bits of the cryptocurrencies that they are mining.

Igor, a 29 year-old programmer in Skopje, started out mining for Ethereum in 2017, when the currency was worth around $700.

“At the beginning of 2018, when Ethereum reached the then top price of $1,397 dollars, it did seem like an investment from which you could earn really well,” he said. “However, over time the price began to fall sharply and reached a price that was demotivating and unprofitable to invest in.” Igor gave up, but later regretted doing so.

“By the end of 2020 when prices started to rise again, I decided to re-engage a lot more and invest in the equipment needed for mining. Additionally, I also decided to invest in various different cryptocurrencies.”

But while some see cryptocurrencies purely as a means to make money, others are won over by the belief they will transform the global financial system.

Governments and companies across the region are slowly grasping the potential.

In June, Serbia will start implementing a law on digital assets, according to which if someone owns cryptocurrency they will have to pay tax on it.

While Croatia still does not have a law on cryptocurrencies, crypto trading is regulated with the existing law on income tax, which treats crypto as a form of investment. In North Macedonia, crypto trading remains a gray area given the lack of legislation regulating the trading or ownership of cryptocurrencies.

In Serbia, the popular EXIT music festival in the northern city of Novi Sad announced in May that it wouldaccept payments in Bitcoin, while residents of the Croatian town of Sveta Nedelja have been able to pay for various goods and public services with cryptocurrencies since last summer.

“For me, getting rich from crypto is secondary, because I personally believe that crypto is also a philosophy,” said Angelovski, the Skopje-based trader.

“I understand crypto as a libertarian idea that allows you to be free. It also speaks about personal responsibility, and that there are no limits to how far cryptocurrencies can go.”

“In general, I see countries around the world slowly embracing crypto as a new tool for payment,” he told BIRN.“I also think that people are starting to see and think of cryptocurrencies as something that is complementary to the banking system. In a best case scenario though, I think that maybe around 10 per cent of all money in the world will go into crypto.”

For Pupkova, investing in crypto is a lot more tempting than holding her money in a savings account earning very little interest.

“I think that investing in crypto is kind of like having savings,” she said. “And when I think about all the ways in which I have spent my money over the years, at least here I also have the opportunity to make a profit and maybe double my investment.”

Report: Montenegro Ruling Coalition Hired Offshore Company for Election

Posted on May 27, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

The head of the prominent Montenegrin watchdog MANS, Vanja Calovic Markovic, on Wednesday alleged that most political parties concealed part of their election funding sources and the actual costs of their campaigns for last year’s parliamentary elections.

At the promotion of MANS’ parliamentary election report, Calovic Markovic also said one of the parties in the now ruling For the Future of Montenegro coalition used an offshore company to make camaign videos.

“They hired an offshore company, Limanaki Studios LTD, from Cyprus, to produce videos. That company has not submitted financial reports since its establishment, and its owners are hidden,” Calovic Markovic said, not naming the actual party.

“The contract specifies the given company to do advertising videos for 50,000 euros, without the number of commercials or the deadline by when it must be completed, only the payment deadline,” she added.

In parliamentary elections held on August 30 last year, three opposition blocs won a slender majority of 41 of the 81 seats in parliament, ousting the long-ruling Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS.

New Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokaic led the largest bloc in the now ruling majority, the pro-Serbian For the Future of Montenegro, with the Democratic Front, DF, as its strongest member.

DF officials and the Prime Minister have not commented on the MANS report.

Calovic Markovic said that all the competing electoral lists spent a total of about 245,000 euros on advertising on social networks, almost ten times more than in the 2016 parliamentary elections.

“The administrators on social networks that financed the advertising of certain political structures were exclusively from Serbia,” Calovic Markovic noted.

In December 2020, in its report on the election, the OSCE/ODIHR mission said that Montenegro had not managed to ensure transparency, accountability and integrity of campaign finances, despite changes to electoral laws.

“There is general public mistrust in the campaign finance regulatory system, as currently implemented, and despite some improvements, the legal framework does not establish effective safeguards against corruption or circumvention of campaign finance rules,” the report said.

In its 2020 progress report on the country, the European Commission warned that the electoral legal framework remained largely unchanged since the parliamentary elections in 2016.

“While it provides basic regulations for the conduct of democratic elections, gaps and ambiguities allow for circumvention, particularly in campaign finance,” it observed.

Suspicions about secret camaign funds grew in January 2019, when a video clip from 2016 surfaced in which Dusko Knezevic, chairman of the Montenegro-based Atlas Group, appears to hand the then-mayor of Podgorica, Slavoljub Stijepovic, an envelope containing what Knezevic later said was $200,000 to fund election campaigns.

Knezevic, now believed to be in London, told the media he had been giving the DPS, led by President Milo Djukanovic, such sums for about 25 years, during which time the DPS had never been out of power.

In February 2019, the DPS was fined 20,000 euros and ordered to pay 47,500 euros to the state budget, while in February this year the Higher Court in Podgorica suspended criminal proceedings on Stijepovic.

Albania Parliament’s Race to Fill Media Board Causes Alarm

Posted on May 25, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Albania’s parliament on Monday announced vacancies for four positions on the board of the country’s Audio-visual Media Authority, AMA, without waiting for the new parliament elected in the April 25 elections to give its view, prompting concerns about the creation of a one-sided board supportive of Edi Rama’s ruling Socialists.

The decision follows the election of four members of the board of Albania’s public broadcaster, two of whom have a clear political affiliation.

Both boards should by law be politically independent, but their members in practice are widely seen as representatives of the parties who propose them in parliament.

Moreover, the current parliamentary opposition bench comprises a number of MPs who have meanwhile gone over to the government side, causing concern that the new boards will be totally dominated by Socialist Party supporters.

Koloreto Cukalli, head of the Albania Media Council, an NGO based in Tirana, said it looked like a power grab by the Socialists that could damage the credibility of the AMA for years.

“Such institutions should be independent and not, as they have been till now, cross-party boards,” Cukalli said, citing an opinion of the Venice Commission. “If the current parliament elects all of them [the board members], the AMA’s reputation will suffer even more,” he added.

Elvin Luku, head of Medialook, a think tank based in Tirana, added that the current parliament lacked the credibility to elect the new board members, and should leave the task to September, when the new parliament meets.

“The election of the board members of the public broadcaster by the current parliament poses concerns in terms of political independence,” Luku told BIRN.

“We already have a problem with editorial independence and the editorial freedom of the media, so it is of crucial importance that the next parliament elects the AMA board members, not this one”, he said.

The Media Commission of parliament debated the candidates for membership of the public broadcaster board on 26 February.

The law grants the opposition in parliament the right to veto some of the candidates, a right deigned to stop the majority party from imposing its choice. Klajdi Qama, an opposition MP, exerted this right, according to the Commission report on the meeting.

Less then two months later, however, Qama became a Socialist Party candidate in the elections. Despite that, he is still nominally representative of the opposition in the current parliament – one of several MPs from the former opposition that has gone over to the ruling Socialist side.

Other MPs, also nominally representing the opposition, have consistently voted in favour of the government, granting the Socialists a de facto supermajority that will end only when the current parliament is dissolved.

Because of this, the boards of various independent institutions are now seen as tools of the ruling Socialists and not, as before, as representing both the government and opposition.

The last elections, which the Socialists again won, took place on April 25 but the previous parliament is still sitting and won’t likely be dissolved until July 7. The new parliament is expected to meet on 9 September.

“Personally, I would prefer to have AMA board vacancies filled by the next parliament,” media expert Luku told BIRN, pointing out that the vacancies were created in 2018 and 2019, so waiting a few more months will not make much difference.

Poland to Open Investigation into Belarus Hijacking of Ryanair Flight

Posted on May 24, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Polish Prosecutor General and Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro on Monday ordered an investigation into the forced landing of a Polish-registered airplane by the Belarusian authorities and the subsequent removal of an opposition activist who enjoyed protected status in Poland.

Poland is on the frontline of the EU’s diplomatic war with Belarus and its authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, who together with scores of Belarusian officials are under EU sanctions, including travel bans and assets freezes, imposed following the disputed August 2020 election and subsequent crackdown on protestors.

Poland has been vocal in its support of the Belarusian opposition, offering protection to exiles and providing Lukashenko critics with a house in Warsaw to use as their headquarters. The Lukashenko regime has retaliated by targeting members of the Polish minority in Belarus: in the last few months, several Poles in Belarus have been arrested, including Andrzej Poczobut, a journalist and member of the Association of Poles in Belarus.

The Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius was crossing Belarusian airspace when the authorities there, reportedly on Lukashenko’s orders, used a false bomb alert and a fighter jet to force the flight carrying Roman Protasevich to land in Minsk, where security services boarded the plane and arrested the opposition activist.

The incident, which has caused outrage across Europe and was described by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki as “an unprecedented act of state terrorism”, prompted prosecutors in Poland to open an investigation linked to two articles in the Polish criminal code.

One concerns the use of deception or threat of direct violence to take control of an aircraft, which in this case was officially registered in Poland, giving a legal basis for the investigation as the plane is considered Polish territory. The other concerns the unlawful deprivation of freedom of Protasevich, who last year was given protected status in Poland, allowing him to move freely inside the EU, as well as the other passengers.

The 26-year-old journalist is one of the founders of Telegram channel NEXTA, which played a prominent role in the organisation of protests against Lukashenko throughout the second half of last year. At least part of NEXTA’s content had been uploaded from Poland, which hosts a sizeable community of Belarusian exiles, including the channel’s founders and other opposition leaders. Protasevich was no longer living in Poland.

“I have asked the European Council President to expand tomorrow’s European Council agenda and discuss immediate sanctions against A. Lukashenka regime,” Prime Minister Morawiecki tweeted on Sunday night. “Hijacking of a civilian plane is an unprecedented act of state terrorism. It cannot go unpunished.”

Protasevich faces charges in Belarus of inciting public disorder and social hatred, carrying a jail sentence of up to 12 years if convicted. He is also on a list of terrorists compiled by Belarusian authorities and, if officially charged with terrorism, could face the death penalty. The terrified young man reportedly pleaded with the airline crew not to land the plane, saying he would face the death penalty if it did. Belarusian security operatives were reportedly on the plane, which was eventually allowed to fly to its destination in Lithuania after several hours.

The Czechs have joined its neighbour Poland in protesting the actions of the Belarusian regime, though there has been no official reaction yet from Hungary, Slovakia or a joint Visegrad Four statement. However, Katalin Cseh, a Hungarian MEP from the opposition Renew group wrote in a Facebook post: “The detention of the Belarusian activist is unacceptable – Europe must act!… The Hungarian government and Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó must stop their harmful practice of vetoing joint EU action. Instead of supporting dictatorships, the Hungarian government must finally stand up for the protection of our democratic values.”

Romanian Police Academy Chiefs Sentenced for Threatening Journalist

Posted on May 24, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

The former dean of Romania’s Police Academy, Adrian Iacob, and his former deputy, Mihail Marcoci, have each received suspended prison sentences of three years for instigating a fellow officer to blackmail a journalist who had revealed corruption at the institution.

The pair will also have to serve 120 days of community work and have been ordered to compensate the victim with 80,000 lei (more than 16,200 euros), the Bucharest Court of Appeal said on Monday. The verdict is not final and can be appealed.

The threatening message was sent via SMS in April 2019 to the cellphone of Emilia Seran, a journalist with Romania’s publication PressOne who had exposed the dean’s plagiarism of more than two-thirds of his thesis as well as other similar cases among the institution’s professors.

“We are sending this message with the aim of preventing what will follow, everything depends on you,” the SMS began. “Stop all your ongoing activities… if you don’t want that a calvary [crucifiction] starts,” it went on.

Iacob and Marcoci resigned from the Police Academy soon after anti-corruption prosecutors started investigating them on May 24 in 2019 over the threatening message.

Sercan has continued exposing widespread plagiarism among the Academy’s top officials and professors. According to the journalist, 74.3 of the theses conducted at the institution between 2011 and 2016 are suspected of plagiarism.

The Police Academy lost its right to award doctorates in October 2020 by order of the Minister of Education, Monica Anisie, who also ordered a restructuring of the corruption-plagued institution.

On May 13 this year, the Minister of the Interior, Lucian Bode, announced the dismantling of the two doctoral schools within the Police Academy, which, he admitted, “have done great damage to the institution’s image”.

Bode also announced an overhaul of the Interior Ministry’s educational bodies that will include setting up two new faculties, one for police and another for firefighters, as well as the signing of new professors “with an unquestionable academic reputation”.

Croatian President Condemned for Rant Against HRT Reporters

Posted on May 7, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Croatian President Zoran Milanovic drew condemnation on Thursday after he insulted reporters from the public broadcaster Croatian Radio Television, HRT, in the coastal city of Split, accusing them of being tricksters, mercenaries and an embarrassment to the country.

The Union of Croatian Journalists, SNH, and the local branch of the Croatian Journalists’ Association, HND, which gathers HRT reporters, said they “strongly condemned” Milanovic’s verbal attack and his “harmful generalization”, although they themselves “persistently warn of the dubious editorial policy and transparency” of HRT’s current and past administrations.

“Journalists at Croatian Radio Television do their job honestly and responsibly. Most are underpaid, with a salary lower than the Croatian average. They are not responsible for the editorial policy of people who are mostly appointed in agreement with the governing structures,” they noted.

Milanovic quarrelled with the reporters after being asked about Wednesday’s edition of HRT’s TV show Otvoreno [“Open”], which among others hosted law professor Zlata Djurdjevic, who is the president’s candidate to be the next Supreme Court president.

He accused Mislav Togonal, editor of Otvoreno, of having deceived Djurdjevic because he had included “a fourth person in the show, contrary to the agreement”, who is not a candidate for the post of Supreme Court president but who is Djurdjevic’s “colleague from the faculty with whom she is not in a good relationship”.

“Your colleague [Togonal] is an average trickster,” Milanovic told Ivana Silovic, an HRT reporter, in front of her colleagues.

He then asked another journalist if he was also from HRT, and when the journalist said he was, Milanovic said he wanted to talk to other reporters, calling HRT “disgraceful mercenaries”.

“You are usurping space, let [us hear from] other television stations … You are mercenaries of one [political] option, that’s a disgrace,” Milanovic said, suggesting that HRT was under the strong editorial influence of the ruling centre-right Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ.

“Do not be in solidarity with HRT, these journalists are the only ones who know that they will receive a salary,” Milanovic told the other journalists present.

HRT condemned Milanovic, describing the tirade as “an attack from a position of power on journalistic freedoms and on the editorial policy of the public media service”.

Having made a promising start to his five-year term last year, the President has turned many of his own supporters against him by engaging in verbal campaigns against all who criticise him.

However, some in the public share his belief that HRT is politically slanted, criticizing HRT’s editorial policy and claiming it censors its journalists and does not always act as a public service.

The SNH and HND said that if Milanovic really wants to warn about the situation in the public television, “those to whom it applies should be named” and that the two attacked reporters “certainly do not belong to them”.

The Elon Musk effect

Money-spinner or world-changer?

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