Selakovic announces strategy for financial investigations

BELGRADE – Serbian Justice Minister Nikola Selakovic has announced the adoption of a strategy for conducting financial investigations in Serbia and an action plan with measures for the implementation of a strategy for combating various forms of crime and corruption.

In an interview with Tanjug on Tuesday, Selakovic said that an expert team was drawing up the strategy and action plan and that a project was underway aimed at introducing a single entry system of record keeping within the framework of the implementation of the national strategy to combat corruption.

In this area, it is expected that the bill on protection of whistleblowers, whose draft version was positively evaluated by the European Commission, will be adopted first, followed by the adoption of the bill on planning and construction, the justice minister said.

The aim is to enable the public prosecutor to be electronically connected with all bodies that can contribute to a much better and efficient conduct of criminal proceedings, Selakovic said.

“These are, for example, the Customs Administration, or the bodies dealing with the prevention of terrorist financing and money laundering, social work centers, and all the bodies that can provide information and contribute to an investigation,” the minister explained.

In the Serbian judiciary, financial investigations fail because they are not implemented in the way they used to be, and the volume of forfeiture of property acquired through criminal activity is hence significantly smaller.

The justice minister expressed the belief that the introduction of the single entry system of record keeping in criminal proceedings would make Serbia the country with the best system for tracking cases...