Serbia Weak on Penalising Money-Launderers: BIRN Analysis

Less than a fifth of reported cases of money-laundering in Serbia end up in courts, with those convicted often handed a minor sentence of less than a year in prison or fines of fewer than 100 euros, a new analysis by BIRN of Serbia's fight against money-laundering over the last decade shows.

The longest prison sentence handed down for money-laundering was three years, and the shortest was three months. Meanwhile, the smallest fine was 10,000 dinars (nearly 85 euros) and the largest was 5 million dinars (42,456 euros).

Miroslava Milenovic, a financial forensics expert from Belgrade, told BIRN that money laundering is a consequence of organised crime, because it is used to introduce money from the sale of narcotics, human trafficking or arms trading into legal financial flows.

Milenovic said the data shows what is happening in reality, and "why Serbia is poorly assessed in the fight against corruption, as only small cases are actually ending up in courts".

BIRN collected data on the basis of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance from all high prosecutor's offices and courts in Serbia for the period from January 1, 2008 until December 31, 2017, and analysed how many criminal charges have been filed for money-laundering in the past decade, how many were dismissed, how many ended up in court, and what penalties were imposed on those found guilty.

During the decade-long period, 567 criminal reports were filed for money-laundering, with the prosecution rejecting 62 applications.

Only 15 per cent ended up in court - 77 judgments were handed down for 102 defendants. The appeals courts confirmed the first-instance verdicts in most cases.

Most of these cases - nearly half - ended with the defendants having...

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