The State Secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Mr Radomir Ilić, has attended the Innovative responses to current challenges in the area of corruption prevention conference organised by the Anti-Corruption Agency at the Serbian National Parliament House. There, State Secretary Ilić stated that 2019 could rightly be regarded as the year of fight against corruption seen as many important activities had been implemented and the measures previously taken had produced their first results in 2019.
The State Secretary recalled that in May 2019, a new anti-corruption framework legislation had been adopted, namely the Anti-Corruption Act (now titled Anti-Corruption Agency Act). “With the Agency’s organisational structure expanded and the new recruitments, we can now claim that the Agency’s status, independence, purview and capacity have been strengthened more than ever before”, Mr Ilić declared. He added that the Lobbying Act had entered into force in August 2019, with the adoption of which Serbia had met important European standards in corruption prevention (as per GRECO recommendation) and had become one of the few European countries to regulate lobbying by way of a statute.
The State Secretary also highlighted the importance of the Whistleblower Protection Act, passed in 2015, and the Organisation and the Competence of the Government Authorities to Combat Organised Crime, Terrorism and Corruption which had facilitated the establishment of four special anti-corruption units within the high public prosecutor’s offices: in Belgrade, in Kraljevo, in Niš, and in Novi Sad. He reiterated that the Government of the Republic of Serbia and the Ministry of Justice would remain committed to the fight against corruption as a strategic objective, and continue to monitor the results of the existing mechanisms while being attentive to the needs of the government institutions and the civil sector, and open to learning from their experiences, all for the purpose of moving forward through a transparent, an open and an inclusive process as much as possible.
To that end, the State Secretary referred to several important upcoming activities warranting special attention: organisation of specialised training for all participants in the system, preparation of prosecutors’ manuals, signing of cooperation agreements between different government institutions, and creation of a register of crimes of corruption. In conclusion, he announced that the Ministry of Justice would share the draft text of the Property Origins and Special Taxation Bill to the competent authorities for review and an opinion, which would initiate the adoption procedure.