Blic

Snezana Krivokapic

Almost two thirds of court trials for corruption (61 percent) ended with releasing verdicts of the accused and even 80 percent of the individuals found guilty are sentenced on parole. These are data supplied by Transparency International for the period from 2007 to 2009. According to those data even 20 percent of citizens have nothing against giving bribe.

Transparency International also records drop of Serbia on the scale of perceived corruption (at the 86th position from total 186 countries) with the 3.3 index which means ‘endemic corruption’.

Another research, financed by the Embassy of the Netherlands indicates that the efforts by which our country is trying to deal with corruption are the same as those of twelve years ago.

Zoran Stojiljkovic, member of the Anti-Corruption Agency says that new strategy which is to be adopted until the end of the year, contains ‘final goals for tackling corruption and how to achieve those goals’.

According to his words what has been missing so far is coordination and cooperation of bodies that should tackle corruption. That is going to change.

Nemanja Nenadic, Program Director of Transparency Serbia says that it is difficult to evaluate what has been done to cut corruption as long as there is ‘no tool’ to measure the effects.

- That is why we have sent to all parliamentary parties a list with thirteen key anti-corruption policies that include public sector reform, public purchases reform, judicial reform as well as completely independent bodies that are to fight against corruption - Nenadic says

Petrus Van Duyne, Professor of the Tilburg University who presented anti-corruption report in Serbia says that there are anti-corruption institutions and laws but that the results of the judicial and police bodies are at the same level as in the year of 2000.

- Statements by politicians that fight against corruption shall be their priority sound nice, but a budget allocated for that purpose, capacities of competent bodies and training of staff are the best indicators as to how much they really care about that fight - Van Duyne says.

He claims that the most corrupted spheres are those of public purchases, road construction and healthcare.

EUR 20 millions for elections

Zoran Stojiljkovic says that the Anti-Corruption Agency is expecting in the following twenty days to receive from political parties over sums they spent in election campaign.

-The report we received from the Ministry of Finance indicates that EUR 7 millions have been allocated for parliamentary election, EUR 7 millions for presidential election, EUR 3 millions for local election and EUR 3 millions for election in Vojvodina. That is within envisaged limit-he says.