{"id":19899,"date":"2017-03-14T10:20:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-14T08:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/the-agency-investigates-whether-branislav-svonja-has-violated-the-law\/"},"modified":"2019-09-04T18:18:50","modified_gmt":"2019-09-04T16:18:50","slug":"the-agency-investigates-whether-branislav-svonja-has-violated-the-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/the-agency-investigates-whether-branislav-svonja-has-violated-the-law\/","title":{"rendered":"The Agency investigates whether Branislav \u0160vonja has violated the law"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe Anti-Corruption Agency<\/em> is checking whether the recently arrested Branislav \u0160vonja<\/strong> was in conflict of interests after being appointed Acting Manager of the Provincial Fund for refugees, exiled, and displaced persons<\/em>.
\n\t
\n\tThe Government of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina appointed \u0160vonja to the position of the Fund manager on 27 July 2016. As an official, he was obliged to transfer management of all his private jobs to another person within a month, and notify the Agency thereof.
\n\t
\n\tIn the beginning of December 2016, the Provincial Secretariat for Social Policy, Demography and Gender Equality<\/em> contacted the Agency asking whether they were aware of the fact that \u0160vonja was engaged in other business activities as well. The Secretariat officials also wanted to know whether this presented a conflict of interests pursuant to the Anti-Corruption Agency Act.
\n\t
\n\tIn their response from January 2017, the Agency specified that, upon checking the Agency for Business Registers, they found out that, until 7 December 2016, \u0160vonja did serve as a representative of a Novi Sad based company \u0160vonja<\/em> and that he neither transferred his managing rights after the appointment in the Fund, nor did he notify the Agency of his position as a representative.
\n\t
\n\tIn the response mentioned, the Agency quoted Article 33 of the Anti-Corruption Agency Act, according to which an official whose public office demands full time work may not hold management, supervisory or representation office in a private capital company.
\n\t
\n\tBased on a suspicion that \u0160vonja had offended both the aforementioned Article and the Article governing timely transfer of managing rights within a prescribed period, the Agency instituted proceedings against \u0160vonja.
\n\t
\n\tThe investigation carried out by the Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia<\/em> (CINS) shows that, while holding a public office, \u0160vonja had occupied the position of manager in three other companies.
\n\t
\n\tThus he is still the owner of SB company<\/em> based in Novi Sad, holding the position of its manager until 7 December 2016. This company is the owner of Nacionalna turisti\u010dka mre\u017ea<\/em> wherein \u0160vonja also occupied the position of a manager until 14 December last year.
\n\t
\n\tUntil 26 October 2016, \u0160vonja was the owner of the company Nacionalni privredni operater<\/em>. He was replaced as the company owner by Slobodan \u0160vonja<\/strong>. One month before, Slobodan had also replaced Branislav as the manager of Nacionalni privredni operater<\/em>.
\n\t
\n\tThe investigation carried out by CINS showed that, in the course of previous years, Nacionalni privredni operater<\/em> was selling data otherwise freely available on the Internet, to state institutions, local self-government units, and public and private companies throughout Serbia.
\n\t
\n\t\u0160vonja was arrested on Thursday, 9 March, based on a suspicion that, from August 2014 until March 2016, as the owner of Nacionalni privredni operater<\/em> and in cooperation with another person, he had committed the criminal offence of fraud for extended duration.
\n\t
\n\tExcept in the aforementioned companies, \u0160vonja is listed in the Central Register of Business Entities of Montenegro as authorized representative or the owner of three other companies: Telekom \u0161tampa<\/em>, PT Telefonija<\/em> and Novinatel<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tNot even a disclosure report concerning the property was provided by \u0160vonja in due time<\/h2>\n

\n\t
\n\tPursuant to the Anti-Corruption Agency Act, within 30 days of appointment an official is obliged to submit to the Agency a disclosure report concerning his property and income.
\n\t
\n\t\u0160vonja submitted such a report as late as in December last year, specifying that he was an owner of three companies \u2013 two in Serbia: SB company<\/em> and \u0160vonja<\/em> and one in Croatia – Operator za mobilnost u gospodarskom poslovanju<\/em>, headquartered in Zagreb.
\n\t
\n\tOut of the remaining property, \u0160vonja has reported to the Agency a purchase of a 139 square meters house, 53 acres of tilled fields and a half of a family residential building with a total surface of 554 square meters.
\n\t
\n\tOver many years \u0160vonja has been active in the political life of Croatia and that of Serbia. In Serbia he was the president of Serbian Democratic Party<\/em> and a representative of the association Union of the Serbs of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tClose to the end of 2015, a valid sentence was pronounced against him for purchase of votes during local elections in the municipality of Od\u017eaci, which is why he had to pay a fine of 200,000 dinars.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

\n\tThe story has been produced under an EU funded grant, awarded in the Media Programme 2014. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the EU. <\/em><\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\"\"  \"\"<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Upon being appointed to public office, Branislav \u0160vonja did not mention another job position that he held – a representative of the company \u0160vonja. CINS finds out that he occupied the position of manager in three other companies and did not even submit a disclosure report on his property in due time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1124,"featured_media":16384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,1572,1583],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-public-officials","category-serbia","ciTrackContent"],"acf":[],"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/1489483430~~Svonja-MC.jpg","author_additional":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19899"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22273,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19899\/revisions\/22273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}