Eurasia Press & News
Anti-corruption experts urge for changes to party financing laws and advocate for stricter auditing.
Verica Barac, President of the Council for the Fight Against Corruption told Blic Daily that there is a reason political parties in power are “desperately defending public funds, public purchases and public enterprises”. They are not allowing their auditing or supervision because “political parties are being financed by them”, Barac said.
As noted by other independent experts dealing with the issue of corruption in Serbia, Barac, too insists on the necessity for changing the Law on party funding. She, however, claims that this will not be enough: “We need stronger institutions capable of controlling the flow of public money”.
The Democratic Party, DP, is the only political party that has posted on its website the financial report for the last fiscal year. The list of party’s financiers does not specify a single name of any of the large businessmen or companies operating in Serbia. The report also contains a mistake, indicating that the DP is receiving donations from people it has appointed to leading positions in public enterprises, which is clearly contrary to the law in force.
“These financial reports are absolutely useless and mean nothing since political parties put in them what they want, and the only thing they pay attention to is remaining within legal boundaries. We need a State Auditor to check these reports”, Verica Barac says.
An example she mentions of money-siphoning from public funds is that of the Directorate for Construction lands in Belgrade (led by DP staff). They allegedly paid EUR 800.000 to a foreign company in 2006 for writing a study on the relocation of the Belgrade Port, although three years earlier, that same Directorate had already financed a general plan about Urbanism and numerous related studies.
Experts from CeSID, the Faculty of Political Sciences and ‘Transparency Serbia’ warned on many previous occasions of the various discrepancies between financial reports submitted by political parties and the real assets the parties are claiming, that ratio of discrepancy is estimated to be 1:10. According to the Law on party funding, donations must not exceed the total amount a party gets from the budget of Serbia.
