Alta Banka: TOK Asks Police to Check NBS Officials Too
After Alta Banka lost its license, the organized crime prosecutor published a timeline of its requests, while four NBS vice governors want liability inside the central bank examined.
The Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime (TOK) on Saturday, October 31, published a timeline of its requests concerning Alta Banka and confirmed that it received, by email, a criminal complaint from the National Bank of Serbia (NBS) against the legal entity Alta Banka and several responsible persons in it. The statement does not say which criminal offenses the complaint covers.
The same day, four NBS vice governors publicly called on prosecutors to establish the circumstances of the license revocation, including possible criminal liability of officials inside the central bank itself. On Friday, the prosecutor’s office had already asked police to check the responsible persons at the NBS as well.
License revoked at 2:25 a.m.
The NBS Executive Board decided to revoke the operating license of Alta Banka a.d. Beograd, and the announcement reached the media at 2:25 a.m. The Deposit Insurance Agency is to be appointed bankruptcy trustee by court order and has seven working days to enable depositors to be paid their insured amounts.
The NBS describes its reason this way:
“It was established that in the previous period the bank’s financial condition deteriorated significantly, that there is a possibility of further deterioration of the bank’s financial condition or liquidity, and that in this regard the interests of the bank’s depositors are endangered.”
The decision followed a temporary measure imposed on Friday that blocked the bank’s payment operations, after which Alta Banka was also cut off from the NBS instant payment system. The bank is owned by businessman Davor Macura, and since 2019 its majority shareholder had been the exchange office Alta pay. The bank’s assets stood at 1.65 billion euros at the end of 2025. Rumors of money transfers abroad have been spreading since Monday, October 26.
What TOK says about the order of its requests
According to the TOK statement, the requests came in sequence, prompted by a wave of reports about outflows of money:
- October 27: a request went to the NBS for data on all Alta Banka transactions abroad since September 27, prompted by media and social media reports about outflows of funds;
- October 29: a new request followed, for data on conversions and outflows of money from the bank’s accounts abroad;
- October 30: the NBS supplied data from quarterly reports up to and including September 20, noting that it can send a report for the requested period only after November 4;
- October 30: TOK asked the Organized Crime Service of the Interior Ministry (MUP) to check Alta Banka’s operations, along with the responsible persons at the NBS, over possible outflows and transfers of money abroad.
In the same statement, the prosecutor’s office says it asked police for “urgent action and a check of the entire operations of this bank and all circumstances that led to the revocation of the operating license.”
What the four vice governors want
The statement was signed by Zeljko Jovic, Ana Ivkovic, Dragana Stanic and Nikola Dragasevic. They say they learned the real state of the bank, which differed substantially from the reports the bank had been sending the NBS, only at an urgent extraordinary Executive Board session on the evening of Friday, October 30. Governor Jorgovanka Tabakovic is not mentioned in the statement.
This is what they ask of prosecutors:
“We demand that the competent public prosecutor’s office, in accordance with its legal powers, take the necessary actions without delay to establish all facts and circumstances that made it necessary to adopt the said decision to protect the interests of the bank’s depositors, as well as the possible criminal liability of responsible persons in the National Bank of Serbia.”
They also want it established when, and at what level of management, the identified risks were known, how employees’ warnings were handled, and whether failing to act, or acting late, amounts to a criminal offense.
Reactions from politics and prosecutors
Democratic Party president Srdjan Milivojevic demanded detention for Tabakovic and Macura. In his statement he used the word “bringing in,” and asked TOK to question them urgently and seize the bank’s servers and backup servers, including those held by the Deposit Insurance Agency. Milivojevic also filed a criminal complaint against Tabakovic on Thursday over the alleged approval of a dinar-to-euro conversion for Alta Banka’s needs. He has offered no evidence of personal involvement by Tabakovic or Macura, so his demand today is political. No response from the NBS, Tabakovic or Macura to these demands has been published.
Prosecutor Bojana Savovic told N1 that, to her knowledge, TOK already has an open case against the bank’s director and owner. TOK does not mention this in its statement. On the bank itself she said:
“I have no particular sympathy for that bank. That bank served roughly to launder illegal money in this country, and I think nobody has empathy there.”
That is the prosecutor’s assessment, not an established fact. Her remark “We had institutions that kept silent the whole time” concerns the Canopy (Nadstresnica) case, not Alta Banka: Savovic used it to describe the High Prosecutorial Council’s attitude toward Supreme Public Prosecutor Nenad Stefanovic.
The NBS report on transactions abroad for the period TOK requested will arrive only after November 4, the central bank told prosecutors.
