Unfinished Anticorruption Affairs

Transparency – Serbia (official chapter of Transparency International) reminds of the celebration of International Anticorruption Day today. That date was established by UN General Assembly on the occasion of signing UN Convention Against Corruption on December 9^th 2003 (UNCAC)[1].

Although in some areas, Serbian regulations are harmonized with this Convention, a lot remains yet to be done, especially in regards to creating efficient anticorruption mechanisms in practice. Among other, Serbia still hasn’t established employment and promotion system in public sector that would completely be based on objective criteria, complete transparency of data on decision making, nor adequate protection of „persons reporting facts related to corruption“.

Contrary to adopted regulations, political influence is still crucial when electing heads of public sector. Numerous suspicions to party employment, due to which public sector is oversized, still remain uninvestigated. Influences to decision making of executive and legislative authority still remain hidden due to inexistent regulations on lobbying, lack of public debates in most of the cases and unpublished agreements with investors. Although quality model of Law on Whistleblower Protection was presented eight months ago, it still remains unknown when Serbia will finally adopt this, much needed, regulation, and whether it will be comprehensive enough[2]. All the facts and suspicions related to sources of election campaign financing, abuse of public resources and purchasing of votes in 2012, still remain to be investigated, and currently rising topic in public focus is possibility of calling for new general elections.

Convention invites state parties to introduce in their legal systems, criminal act of illicit enrichment "significant increase in the assets of a public official that he or she cannot reasonably explain in relation to his or her lawful income". Transparency - Serbia for years advocated for introducing this criminal act into Criminal Code and it is with great pleasure that we announce that, to our initiative, it was finally included into National Anticorruption Strategy. According to deadlines from Action Plan, by June 2014 Ministry of Justice should prepare amendments to Criminal Law,  and Assembly should adopt that preposition by December next year. Transparency – Serbia considers necessary, parallel to introducing of this criminal act into legal system, to resolve all dilemmas on many times announced adoption of the Law on Investigating of Property Origin and presenting data on recent implementation of measures for cross examining property and incomes, envisaged by the Law on Tax Procedure and Tax Administration ever since 2003.

Transparency – Serbia

Belgrade, 9th December 2013