{"id":19994,"date":"2016-06-02T07:43:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-02T05:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/fight-against-corruption-spectacle-on-camera-silence-in-courtrooms\/"},"modified":"2019-09-04T18:36:01","modified_gmt":"2019-09-04T16:36:01","slug":"fight-against-corruption-spectacle-on-camera-silence-in-courtrooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/fight-against-corruption-spectacle-on-camera-silence-in-courtrooms\/","title":{"rendered":"Fight against Corruption: Spectacle on Camera, Silence in Courtrooms"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEarly in the morning on the 24th of September, 2013, police officers interrupted Borislav Novakovi\u0107<\/strong>\u2019s physical therapy and took him to a police station. A whole month and a half earlier the media reported that Novakovi\u0107, the Democratic Party caucus leader in Vojvodina\u2019s parliament and former director of the Novi Sad Construction Bureau, would be arrested as \u2018a robber baron\u2019 over mismanagement of construction land.
\n\t 
\n\tAnother seven individuals were arrested on the same day, including Novi Sad businessmen Petar Matijevi\u0107<\/strong>, the owner of meat processing company Matijevi\u0107<\/em>, and Vojislav Gaji\u0107<\/strong>, the general manager of Aleksandar gradnja<\/em> construction company, respectively. This information soon became the news of the day, so much so that even Ivica Da\u010di\u0107<\/strong>, the then interior minister, bragged about it at one his press conferences.<\/p>\n

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

\n\t

\n\t\tResearch Methodology<\/h2>\n\t

\n\t\tCINS gathered data on corruption cases from the documentation of the Interior Ministry, 36 basic prosecutor\u2019s offices (out of a total of 58), 15 higher prosecutor\u2019s offices (out of 25 in total), the Organised Crime Prosecutor\u2019s Office, as well as 59 basic courts (out of a total of 66) and 20 higher courts (out of 25 in total). CINS received no response from other courts and prosecutor\u2019s offices or the replies received could not be used to disaggregate data.
\n\t\t 
\n\t\tCINS journalists requested data from the Interior Ministry and judicial institutions on the following criminal offences: accepting bribes, offering bribes, giving and accepting bribes in connection to voting, abuse of office, violation of law by a judge and a public prosecutor, fraud in service, embezzlement, unauthorised use, influence peddling and abuse of position by a responsible person.
\n\t\t 
\n\t\tIt is important to point out that no year-on-year comparisons could be made in terms of the number of charges, indictments and verdicts because in a given year prosecutors\u2019 offices and courts also process criminal charges and indictments from previous years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tEight individuals in total were suspected of inflicting damage to Novi Sad and the Republic of Serbia. Novakovi\u0107 and his female associates from the City Construction Office<\/em> were suspected of alleged abuse of public office and failure to prevent misappropriation of land, whereas the others were charged with abuse of authority in economy and tax evasion.
\n\t 
\n\tIn the end, the case has never found its way to a courtroom. A little more than two years later, the investigation against all the suspected individuals was dropped as the Higher Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office in Novi Sad abandoned further prosecution. In its reply to the Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia<\/em> (CINS), the Prosecutor\u2019s Office stated that there were no reasonable grounds for their prosecution as the suspicions were not substantiated.
\n\t 
\n\tThe CINS investigation shows that fight against corruption, although highlighted as a priority by every government in recent ten or so years, boils down in practice to media announcements and arrests on camera. These are followed through with a flurry of criminal charges, but indictments are then in short supply and guilty verdicts are few and far between. Even when a verdict is handed down, suspended sentences seem to be the order of the day. Petty corruption is more often prosecuted.
\n\t 
\n\tOver a six-month period, CINS journalists were collecting data from judicial institutions in Serbia on the prosecution of ten corruption-related criminal offences from 2013 through to the end of 2015. A total of 6,179 individuals were reported to the police over these crimes. According to the data from prosecutors\u2019 offices which provided information, almost three thousand individuals were charged.
\n\t 
\n\tInformation collected from basic and higher courts showed that 1,861 sentences were handed down, though one should bear in mind that some individuals received two sentences, e.g. a suspended sentence and a fine, so that the total number of convicted persons was about 1,500. Of the total tally, the majority were suspended sentences \u2013 1,268.
\n\t 
\n\tThe lion\u2019s share of cases were dealt with by basic courts and prosecutors\u2019 offices, authorised to prosecute crimes for which more lenient penalties were stipulated \u2013 fines or up to ten years\u2019 imprisonment. The Organised Crime Prosecutor\u2019s Office and a special division of the Higher Court in Belgrade (the Special Court) dealt with bigger cases. Over three years, this prosecutor\u2019s office charged 232 persons for corruption-related crimes and the Special Court passed 200 guilty verdicts over the same period.
\n\tBorislav Novakovi\u0107 told CINS he had been first interviewed by the police about three months prior to his arrest going on to say he did not expect to be arrested.
\n\t 
\n\t\u201cThey did not even know how to pronounce properly either my name and surname or my public office title. They came to my door, showed their official IDs and asked me if I were Branislav Novkovi\u0107, a director of the public enterprise Urbanizam<\/em>\u201d, said Novakovi\u0107. \u201cWhen they arrest you, you\u2019re on central news show and national breaking news. When the prosecutor\u2019s office drops its investigation (…) and says \u2018this man is innocent\u2019, then it\u2019s published in small print in a newspaper\u2019s crime section which only my family and my friends would read.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tArrests as Reality Show<\/h2>\n

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

\n\tPolice raids and arrests over alleged corruption have been front and centre on cover pages of Serbian media in the past three years. The last one in a series was Scanner 2 <\/em>operation which took place at the height of the election campaign in April 2016 as part of which 49 persons were detained.
\n\t 
\n\tExperience so far teaches us that only a few end up being convicted of corruption.<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\"\"<\/a>\n\t

\n\t\tBorislav Novakovi\u0107, a Democratic Party official, learnt about his arrest in the media<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tAccording to the Interior Ministry data, from the 1st of January, 2013, to the 31st of December, 2015, in Serbia, 254 persons were arrested and 6,179 persons were charged with corruptive criminal offences analysed by CINS.
\n\t 
\n\tThe new Criminal Procedure Act, in effect since 2013, lowered the suspicion threshold required for launching a criminal investigation. CINS\u2019 interviewees described a number of criminal charges were brought as a potential vehicle for political score-settling as well as a means for the citizens to \u2018collect debts\u2019 through the police and prosecutors\u2019 offices.
\n\t 
\n\tDeputy prosecutor with the Third Basic Prosecutor\u2019s Office Nenad Stefanovi\u0107<\/strong> said it was now possible to initiate investigations based on low suspicion threshold \u2018just because someone doesn\u2019t like you or wants to frame you\u2019.
\n\t 
\n\tPresident of the Serbian Judiciary Trade Union Sla\u0111anka Milo\u0161evi\u0107<\/strong> was of the opinion that there were both genuine criminal charges and those used for political score-settling:
\n\t 
\n\t\u201cThey bring charges, prosecutor\u2019s office pokes you a bit, no evidence there, but regardless, the whole judicial machinery is set in motion, it ends up in court, but in court this can\u2019t hold water or no guilty verdict is likely, and then we, all the citizens, pay for this shadow play involving judiciary, politics and police.\u201d
\n\t 
\n\tThe CINS investigation shows that fight against corruption in Serbia for the most part comes down to only three criminal offences: embezzlement (982 criminal charges), abuse of public office (2,361) and abuse of position by a responsible person (2,098), which was introduced through amendments to the Criminal Code in 2012.
\n\t 
\n\tDepending on the gravity of a given criminal offence, i.e. prescribed sentence or damage inflicted, the whole proceedings are conducted by either basic or higher public prosecutor\u2019s office. As in the case of criminal charges above, the prosecutors\u2019 offices most often bring indictments for abuse of office and embezzlement. However, the difference in the number of people who were reported for corruption and the number of those actually charged with corruption is significant.
\n\t  
\n\tStatistics for the three biggest cities in Serbia \u2013 Belgrade, Ni\u0161 and Novi Sad \u2013 will illustrate the point vividly. In the past three years, the Higher Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office in Belgrade has processed reports for embezzlement, abuse of public office and abuse of position for a total of 1,376 persons, whereas bills of indictment and indictments were brought against 362. The Higher Prosecutor\u2019s Office in Novi Sad has processed reports for corruption involving 843 individuals, but indictments were brought against 68. The Higher Prosecutor\u2019s Office in Ni\u0161 has received reports for corruption against 210 persons, but indictments or bills of indictment were brought against 72 individuals.<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tAbuse of Abuse<\/h2>\n

\n\t 
\n\tTwo criminal offences of abuse of office are problematic, according to some legal experts, because they are formulated in broadest terms so that, in practice, it is possible to prosecute people for a variety of things, but without big results. In its latest progress report on Serbia, even the European Commission<\/em> stated that the abuse of public office was excessively used, \u201cincluding in those cases where objectively there is no criminal conduct\u201d.
\n\t 
\n\tJudge of the Court of Appeals in Belgrade Miodrag Maji\u0107<\/strong> explained that serious errors are often made in the interpretation of these offences so it is possible to prosecute \u201ceveryone and no one\u201d. Hence, he went on, it would be for the best to either remove or replace these offences with others which would be far more specific.<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\"\"<\/a>\n\t

\n\t\tMiodrag Maji\u0107, a judge of the Court of Appeals in Belgrade<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n\t\u201cI always say the abuse of that abuse is taking place,\u201d said Maji\u0107. \u201cHow many such cases are meaningless in legal terms from the very start\u2026 but there is a certain political pressure seeping through the media and then you plunge yourself in a stream with no end and no beginning, where everyone more or less clearly sees that this will lead to nowhere.\u201d
\n\t 
\n\tHigh-level corruption cases are not even investigated as long as the individuals in question are a part of the current government, added Maji\u0107.
\n\t 
\n\tSerbian deputy public prosecutor Goran Ili\u0107<\/strong> explained that abuse of public office, as it now stands, provides \u201ca very broad discretion in prosecution\u201d, going on to say that it should be specified in more detail.
\n\t 
\n\t\u201cMore often than not prosecutors resort to the charge of abuse of public office, when they are not sure if a more specific offence against public office is at issue in a given case. (…) Some types of crimes against public office are not \u2018covered\u2019 by some other criminal offence so the only thing possible is to prosecute for abuse of public office,\u201d said Ili\u0107.
\n\t 
\n\tThe Justice Ministry, which has drafted new amendments to the Criminal Code, is also aware of this problem.
\n\t 
\n\tRadomir Ili\u0107<\/strong>, state secretary with the Ministry of Justice, explained that these changes would introduce new types of criminal offences, but also modify the abuse of position by a responsible person, which would be used only if no other offence was applicable.
\n\t 
\n\tOtherwise, said Ili\u0107, the court will not allow the indictment to take effect, but if that happens, it will not be able to stand the test of the appellate procedure.<\/p>\n

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

\n\tHelped Themselves from Solidarity Fund to Give Over to Football Club<\/h2>\n

\n\t 
\n\tIn the autumn of 2008, a sum of about 700,000 dinars was transferred into the account of a small football club Crnokosa<\/em> from Kosjeri\u0107, from the account of this municipality\u2019s Solidarity Housing Fund<\/em>. This payment was approved by the then mayor \u017deljko Prodanovi\u0107<\/strong>.
\n\t 
\n\tThis was why, in 2014, he was handed down a suspended sentence of two years.
\n\t 
\n\tOver the course of those two years, Prodanovi\u0107 was first working as a deputy mayor, and then, following his resignation from this office, as a deputy in the municipal assembly.
\n\t 
\n\tProdanovi\u0107 told CINS he just wanted to help the local football club until it received a previously promised payment after which the money would be repaid to the municipality.
\n\t
\n\t\u201cMeanwhile, Kosjeri\u0107 was placed under emergency management and I left the municipality so this wasn\u2019t finalised, and then someone took advantage of it to attack me. (…) I didn\u2019t do anything that hadn\u2019t been done before to fund the football club. This was a procedural mistake there, but it had nothing to do with corruption whatsoever,\u201d explained Prodanovi\u0107.
\n\t 
\n\tProdanovi\u0107\u2019s suspended sentence is a part of the aggregate statistical data provided by the basic courts which responded to the CINS request, where 80 per cent of all the sentences are suspended ones.<\/p>\n

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

\n\t

\n\t\tCorruption Cases Make Up a Fraction of Criminal Cases<\/h2>\n\t

\n\t\tWhilst corruption-related convictions from 2013 to late 2015 were handed down to about 1,500 individuals, this constitutes only a fraction of the overall tally of criminal cases in Serbia. According to the Serbian Statistical Office, in 2014 a total of 35,376 persons were convicted on criminal charges, whereas, by CINS records, around 500 persons were sentenced for corruption, i.e. 1.5 per cent of the total number of criminal convictions. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tHigher courts have fewer convictions, but they hand down equally often, in about 80 per cent of all the cases, prison sentences since they process more serious criminal offences resulting also in higher fines.
\n\t 
\n\tOut of a total number of sentences (1,861) handed down by courts in the past three years, 538 persons received house imprisonment and proper prison sentences, whereas 55 were fined. Suspended sentences were given to 1,268 persons.
\n\t 
\n\tAs regards the verdicts themselves, taking into account all analysed corruptive criminal offences in the past three years, there were 871 acquittals as well as 463 nonsuits \u2013 where the court did not accept the plaintiff\u2019s charges. Overall, there were 1,118 guilty verdicts of which some pertained to several individuals with different sentences.
\n\t 
\n\tMarko<\/strong>, a son of Miroslav Mi\u0161kovi\u0107<\/strong>, was recently acquitted of charges for corruptive offence. His arrest and that of his father was captured on camera by the Interior Ministry in December 2012, and the charges were brought five months later for the criminal offence of abuse of position by a responsible person and tax evasion over alleged infliction of damage to privatised road construction companies.
\n\t 
\n\tIn March 2016, Marko Mi\u0161kovi\u0107<\/strong> was sentenced on tax evasion charges to 3.5 years\u2019 imprisonment and fined 8 million dinars. He was acquitted of the charge of abuse of position by a responsible person. The proceedings against Miroslav Mi\u0161kovi\u0107 is still under way.
\n\t 
\n\tPresident of the Judges\u2019 Association of Serbia Dragana Boljevi\u0107<\/strong> said that the outcome in court depends on how well the police and the prosecutor prepare their case.
\n\t 
\n\t\u201cIt is not a duty of a court of law to convict someone at all costs. If there is a reasonable doubt, the court must find a way to acquit the defendant because the court is not there to mete out convictions but to administer justice,\u201d said Boljevi\u0107 and added that judges needed additional training in the field of economy as some offences therein were difficult to prove.<\/p>\n

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

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

Whilst highlighted as a priority by every government in recent years, fight against corruption boils down in practice to media announcements, arrests on camera and a large number of criminal charges brought, but without convictions in courts. Indictments are in short supply, verdicts are few and far between, and suspended sentences are the order of the day, shows the 6-month-long investigation carried out by CINS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1339,"featured_media":17873,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1492,1572],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-investigative-stories","category-public-officials","ciTrackContent"],"acf":[],"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/1464853851~~Antikorupcija-Ilustracija-sa-belilom.png","author_additional":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19994","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\/1339"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19994"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22290,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19994\/revisions\/22290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}