Radulovic: More charges should be pressed in SIEPA case

BELGRADE - Sasa Radulovic, former Serbian minister of economy, said on Wednesday that the arrest of former heads of the Serbia Investment and Export Promotion Agency (SIEPA) is just a part of the criminal charge relating to fictitious contracts, which the ministry he had headed pressed against the director of that agency.

"There is another part of the criminal charge about which, I hope, the Prosecutor's Office will voice its opinion," Radulovic said at a press conference, adding that there are even more criminal charges.

These charges relate to multiple invoicing of stands for trade fairs and various services conducted via off-shore companies linked to the people who had some connections to the Ministry of Economy, he said.

In the case of SIEPA, there are even examples that some firms got subsidies, then received guarantees from Metals Bank and Agrobanka, as the people leading the companies were actually tied to political parties, he added.

Thus, some employees had a salary of RSD 130,000, and then paid RSD 60,000 into a party's money box, Radulovic said.
He did not want to disclose the details concerning fictitious contracts, as the matter is within the competence of the prosecutor's office, but noted that such things probably also occurred in other agencies, SIEPA being just the most striking example of that.

Early on Wednesday, police arrested former SIEPA heads - Jasna Matic, Vesna Peric, Bojan Jankovic and Bozidar Laganin on suspicion that they committed the crime of abuse of power.

They were at the helm of SIEPA in the period from 2006 to 2013, and were arrested on suspicion that they caused losses of about RSD 120 million to the Serbian budget through the unjustified payments, arising...

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