Fight against corruption has been one of the top priorities of the Government of the Republic of Serbia. This position is not declaratory in nature considering the many Government activities taken recently which support it. The process of amending the provisions of the Constitution concerning the judiciary has been initiated with the aim of strengthening judicial independence and impartiality of the prosecutorial system. The Lobbying Act and the Corruption Prevention Act have been passed, and many other measures have also been taken which are listed in Serbia’s Compliance Report containing GRECO recommendations. Serbia will be in full compliance with three of those recommendations once the said acts have been adopted and enforced.
Simultaneously, in March 2018, the application of the new Organisation and Competence of Government Authorities in Combatting Organised Crime, Terrorism and Corruption Act commenced as well as the amendments to the Criminal Code which introduced seven new criminal offences with elements of corruption to Serbia’s legal system. Owing to these legislative solutions, four new anti-corruption regional centres have been formed within high prosecutorial offices and high courts in Belgrade, Niš, Novi Sad and Kragujevac, which comprise of expert judges and prosecutors specialising in anti-corruption. In the first year of the application of the Act, the courts have issued 448 final conviction orders against 523 persons, which mostly involved a prison sentence.
Here is an overview of criminal offences per type per number of accused and convicted persons from 1 March 2018 to 1 March 2019:
Article 223 Commercial fraud (new criminal offence, in force since 1 March 2018) – 5 accused, 2 convicted persons
Article 224 Business embezzlement (new criminal offence, in force since 1 March 2018) – 72 accused, 65 convicted persons
Article 227 Abuse of position by a responsible person – 100 accused, 53 convicted persons
Article 228 Misfeasance in public procurement – 22 accused, 6 convicted persons
Article 230 Accepting commercial bribe (new criminal offence, in force since 1 March 2018) – 2 accused, 1 convicted person
Article 231 Offering commercial bribe (new criminal offence, in force since 1 March 2018) – 5 accused, 2 convicted persons
Article 235 Illicit trade – 4 accused, 3 convicted persons
Article 236 Smuggling – 34 accused, 28 convicted persons
Article 245 Money laundering – 30 accused, 10 convicted persons
Article 359 Abuse of authority – 193 accused, 168 convicted persons
Article 361 Dereliction of duty – 21 accused, 7 convicted persons
Article 364 Embezzlement – 85 accused, 57 convicted persons
Article 365 Unauthorised use – 14 accused, 11 convicted persons
Article 366 Trading in influence – 10 accused, 2 convicted persons
Article 367 Accepting bribe – 48 accused, 22 convicted persons
Article 368 Offering bribe – 104 accused, 86 convicted persons
NB. The total number of convicted persons is not per number of the accused but per reporting period
Similarly, on 21 June 2019, Serbia was removed from the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF’s) list of countries with strategic deficiencies in combatting money laundering and terrorist financing (the so-called ‘Grey list’). On the occasion, the FATF commended Serbia’s significant progress in advancing the system of countering money laundering and terrorist financing, and said that Serbia had strengthened its mechanism in that area. The FATF has also stated that Serbia had made great efforts to implement the FATF Action Plan in order to address the technical compliance and the strategic shortcomings which the FATF had identified in February 2018.
The Government of the Republic of Serbia is committed to making all necessary efforts to fight every form of crime. By the Conclusion of the Government of the Republic of Serbia, dated 29 March 2018, a Coordination Body for Directing Activities for the Implementation of Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (CoE, GRECO) recommendations was formed. The Body is chaired by the Justice Minister and its primary objective is to accelerate the implementation of GRECO recommendations and to the highest standards possible, through a more effective coordination between the government authorities, and to draw attention to the necessary commitment to the fulfilment of GRECO’s recommendations by all competent and corresponding institutions.
Recent publications about fight against corruption published contained incorrect information, among others, that Serbia had received ’13 tasks’ from the Council of Europe ‘which it was supposed to have fulfilled by the end of 2016’, and that ‘the number of recommendations has increased to 17 since then’.
In fact, the Republic of Serbia received a total of 13 recommendations as part of the Fourth Evaluation Round in 2015. That number and the recommendations themselves have not changed. It should also be noted that GRECO’s compliance reports do not define any deadlines by which all recommendations are to be fulfilled. Rather, they define deadlines by which CoE members states must report on their progress in taking measures, i.e. report on the results of their compliance with the recommendations. Naturally, every CoE member state stands to meet all GRECO recommendations in the shortest time possible and report back to the CoE.
In this regard, the Republic of Serbia is no different. However, the specific elements of Serbia’s case are different in that many of the GRECO’s recommendations concern the constitutional amendment which in itself prevents certain recommendations or parts of them from being fulfilled, i.e. until the highest legal act of the Republic of Serbia – the Constitution – can be and has been amended. The amendments initiative came from the Government of the Republic of Serbia. In its Interim Compliance Report on the Republic of Serbia, GRECO concluded that, for the present, 10 recommendations had been partly fulfilled, while three had not at all. With the adoption and the enforcement of the Lobbying Act and the Corruption Prevention Act, three GRECO recommendations have been fully met.
GRECO’s Compliance Report on the Republic of Serbia is a publicly available document in both the English language and the Serbian language. Any interested person may familiarise himself or himself with the fact that 13, not 17 recommendations have been issued to Serbia.
Careless, malicious and tendentious assessments and statements in the media cause the public to be misinformed and misled. The fact remains that the Republic of Serbia has not been ignoring GRECO’s recommendations issued to it, seen as GRECO had decided in its latest report – the Interim Compliance Report – to remove the Republic of Serbia from the list of countries found to be ‘globally unsatisfactory’ when it comes to fighting corruption.