The Nation - News from Dec. 5, 1988

The Yugoslavian consul general in Chicago pleaded not guilty to money laundering charges before a federal magistrate in Philadelphia and was released to his country’s acting ambassador on $150,000 bail. The attorney for Bahrudin Bijedic, indicted last week along with four others, said he would raise the issue of diplomatic immunity at pretrial hearings, despite the fact that consuls are not protected by diplomatic immunity and can be prosecuted for offenses that occur outside their official duties. LBS Bank of New York Inc., the U.S. branch of a Yugoslavian bank, was also indicted. Bijedic was arrested as the result of a U.S. Customs Service sting operation that tracked at least eight alleged transactions totaling nearly $1.5 million. The defendants are accused of taking cash given to them by undercover agents out of the country, depositing it in foreign accounts and wiring the money back to U.S. banks under the names of phony corporations to hide the origin of the money.