The work results of special anti-corruption departments in Belgrade, Niš, Novi Sad and Kraljevo indicate that Serbia is fully committed to prosecuting crimes of corruption’, Justice Minister Nela Kuburović said at 7th Plenary Session of the National Convention on the European Union (NCEU). ‘I am sorry that these results were not acknowledged in the European Commission Report. The Report states that one year was not sufficient to assess the implementation but I do think that the results achieved in that one year should have been acknowledged as more significant’, Minister Kuburović said. She added that more than 500 persons had been convicted of criminal offences with elements of corruption, and mostly sentenced to imprisonment with the confiscation of property.
The Minister also stated that the Prosecutor’s Office for Organised Crime had also showed good results in prosecuting crimes of corruption in the previous period. She noted that senior officials and high-ranking individuals were among those convicted, from municipality presidents, directors of public enterprises, directors of certain institutions and judges had been prosecuted for having accepted bribe, to assistant ministers.
The Minister added that measures to strengthen corruption prevention mechanisms had been taken in the previous period, i.e. the Lobbying Act and as the Corruption Prevention Act had been adopted.
Speaking about the revision of the Chapter 23 Action Plan, Minister Kuburović said that the Ministry of Justice had published the revised Action Plan on its website that day (10 June). ‘The revised Action Plan is the result of a discussion we had with the civil sector, with the NCEU having been the most active. We expected more comments in the previous period, more suggestions about how change the Action Plan activities. Nonetheless, the most elaborate input came from the NCEU’, Minister Kuburović said. She, however, noted that it was still a draft Action Plan which had been forwarded to the European Commission in Brussels for opinion, and that once the opinion was received, a second round of the public hearing would start and last until the opinions have been consolidated.
The Minister also reflected on the amendments to the judicial provisions of the Constitution, saying she expected the National Assembly Committee on Constitutional and Legislative Matters to schedule a session that week to consider the Initiative for Constitutional Amendment which the Government had proposed to the National Assembly in November last year. ‘This will start the debate on the constitutional amendments before the National Assembly’, Kuburović highlighted and added that she believed that both the deputies and the citizens of Serbia would have an opportunity to comment on the wording of the amendments.
Director of the Anti-Corruption Agency Mr Dragan Sikimić, Coordinator of the NCEU Working Group for Chapter 5 Mr Nemanja Nenadić and Mr Slobodan Georgiev from BIRN Serbia also spoke at the plenary.