The court determined that the company’s branch does not have the status of a legal entity, and therefore, misdemeanor proceedings cannot be conducted against it. The verdict also states that a search of the Business Registers Agency (APR) confirmed that Power China International Group Limited is headquartered in China, and that proceedings could only be conducted directly against the company, not its branch in Serbia.
As lawyer Ivana Cvetković previously told CINS, a branch indeed lacks legal subjectivity and cannot be held liable under misdemeanor or criminal law.
Up until the publication of this text, the Labor Inspectorate has not responded to CINS’s questions regarding why the misdemeanor complaint was filed against the branch instead of the company, nor whether or how they intend to rectify this oversight.
As a reminder, CINS revealed in March that during an inspection in February 2025 at the National Stadium construction site in Surčin, the Labor Inspectorate recorded four Chinese workers without work permits. All of them were engaged by the Belgrade branch of PowerChina International Group Limited.
In its written defense before the court, the Belgrade branch stated that the procedure for obtaining work permits had been initiated but was not completed at the time of the inspection.
They also claimed that the workers found on-site without permits were there to familiarize themselves with the work already performed, as well as the future plan and dynamics. They emphasized that this was necessary because the deadlines for completing the work are short and strict.
In addition to the Chinese workers, the Inspectorate previously recorded 26 Turkish workers working on the EXPO construction site without prior work permits, as CINS earlier revealed.
They were engaged by the Serbian company Antares Construction, which was founded only six months after Serbia officially became the host of the specialized EXPO exhibition.
According to the inspection report, at the time of the control, Antares Construction not only lacked permits for the Turkish workers on-site but also had no proof that the workers were in the process of obtaining them.
As concluded from the report, the owner of that company, Aleksandra Gligorin, told the inspector that the workers themselves were supposed to initiate the permit application process.
The Labor Inspectorate also filed misdemeanor proceedings against that company, during which Gligorin admitted to the violation. In that case, a verdict has not yet been reached.
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