HY RU EN
Asset 3

Loading

End of content No more pages to load

Your search did not match any articles

The Mayor of Belgrade’s Multiplying Bank Accounts

Most of us may need one or two bank accounts. But Sinisa Mali, the mayor of Belgrade, appears to have had control over 45, according to a report obtained by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and Serbian investigative journalism outlet KRIK.

The November 2016 report by the Serbian Administration for the Prevention of Money Laundering (APML) details suspicious transactions involving Mali, his wife, and companies he owned or worked for. The mayor held at least 42 accounts registered under himself, his wife, and his three underage children, into some of which he deposited large sums of money. He also had the power of attorney over three accounts registered under other names.

The origins of the damning report lie in an earlier scandal involving Mali. Serbia’s Anti-Corruption Agency opened an investigation into the mayor in 2015, immediately after KRIK/OCCRP discovered and reported on his involvement in the purchase of 24 apartments on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast in 2012 and 2013.

The Agency outlined its suspicions about Mali’s money-laundering in a document which was then sent to the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade alongside APML’s report, which had been requested during the investigation.

According to the Agency, Mali was handling sums which far exceeded his official paycheck, which amounts to 107,000 dinars ($1,100 a month). In one case, the APML report shows, he received more than half a million euros in his private bank account from an offshore company under his control — thanks to a fake business deal that involved him, essentially, buying a company from himself.

But after receiving the reports containing evidence of Mali’s money laundering, prosecutors dismissed the case, saying that they saw no evidence of criminal activity and therefore no grounds to open an investigation. The decision wasn’t so surprising; in recent years, Serbia has not seen a single criminal case opened against a powerful politician.

(See OCCRP and KRIK’s article: Serbia's Corrupt Politicians Need not Fear the Prosecutor)

When contacted by reporters, the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade refused to provide KRIK/OCCRP with justification for the decision and declined to share the APML report. Nevertheless, journalists obtained a copy from another source which cannot be named because they were not authorized to provide it.

Independent auditor Ljubisa Stanojevic, who learned about the report’s content from reporters, described the many transactions detailed as a classic case of money laundering.

“There’s no question about it,” explained Stanojevic. “APML clearly indicated elements of money laundering. [On that basis], the prosecution could have done a serious investigation.”

You Can’t Get Rid of Him

Sinisa Mali became mayor of Belgrade in April 2014. After KRIK and OCCRP published a series of stories that exposed his engagement in corruption (including the Bulgarian apartments and an interview with his ex-wife, who divulged further information), it seemed for a moment that his political career was done for. Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic promised the public that he would fire the disgraced mayor by summer 2017 at the latest.

But Belgrade is still waiting. Vucic changed his mind, saying that he had made the promise in a moment of weakness, and that Sinisa Mali was the best mayor the city has ever had.

In fact, Mali may stick around for a while yet. The city holds elections for the members of the City Council on March 4, and whichever party wins a majority of 110 seats will be able to nominate its choice for mayor.

Political analysts anticipate that the country’s ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), which has held a majority on the council since 2014, is likely to win the race. Sinisa Mali is in third place on the party’s list of potential city council members — but the SNS isn’t keen to advertise that fact.

In fact, the ruling party’s campaign materials for the elections seem to feature every conceivable candidate but Mali. The first name on the party’s list is Zoran Radojicic, a doctor at the prestigious Tirsova pediatric clinic in central Belgrade. The second is the ballerina Aja Jung.

Normally, the candidate at the top of the winning party’s list becomes mayor. In theory, Sinisa Mali is only the third choice. But in practice, he could get lucky; both Radojicic and Jung have openly said in interviews to Serbian media that they are not enthusiastic about careers in politics. As Radojicic put it, he wouldn’t give up his job for any other.

The SNS’ promotion of such celebrated, but reluctant, public figures in the race has led observers to suspect that the party is setting Mali up for yet another term as mayor. There’s a logic to this approach — Mali’s involvement with controversial projects such as the Belgrade Waterfront and his alleged corruption scandals has led to his becoming deeply unpopular with many of the capital’s residents.

Political analyst Cvijetin Milivojevic says that the electoral system in Serbia — in which citizens vote for an electoral list, not for an individual candidate — enables the ruling SNS party to keep a ‘place to hide.’

“You don’t have to put the person who will actually run the city administration as the candidate — you hide them behind a group of aldermen” said Milivojevic in an interview for OCCRP partner KRIK. “Right now, Mali is not the favorite — he’s hidden behind non-party people.”

“If citizens voted directly [for the mayor], then that person for sure wouldn’t be Sinisa Mali,” continues Milivojevic. “But if the SNS has a majority in the [municipal] assembly, they can put Mali in as mayor and nobody needs to ask the citizens anymore.”

 Prominent Connections

Belgrade’s citizens may soon have some questions themselves, since Mali’s last tenure as mayor seems to have been quite lucrative. Almost half of the 45 bank accounts described in the APML’s report were opened under his name, while others were opened under the name of his wife, other people or companies. In the latter cases, Mali had power of attorney to control the accounts under unclear circumstances.

The accounts over which Mali had power of attorney were associated with companies and people he had dealt with in the past.

One personal account was opened under the name of a Belgrade architect named Bosko Urosevic. Since Mali had power of attorney over the account, he would be able to freely make payments and withdrawals, though in this case the report does not include information about any transactions.

(The account was held at Telenor bank, indicating that it must have been opened after Mali became mayor, since the bank only opened in Serbia in September 2014, six months after he came to the position.)

The connection between Mali and Urosevic is unlikely to be accidental. Reporters found that the two men share the same business partner -- the international construction company GTC, which is currently building a 100-million-euro shopping mall in Belgrade.

KRIK reporters tried to contact Urosevic through his company, but his employees responded that the architect never gives interviews for media, and will not do so now.

read more

Write a comment

If you found a typo you can notify us by selecting the text area and pressing CTRL+Enter