Tag: Serbia

Citizens Choose Favourite Projects in Participatory Budgeting

After proposing and voting on projects, ordinary people in ten participating municipalities have selected the ones that they want to see financed from their municipal budgets.

Ten municipalities taking part in the Participatory Budgeting project have assigned part of their 2016 budget for financing projects that were chosen as the best among the many proposed.

Local people had a chance to nominate projects that they thought would best advance their community, after which the Commission in each municipality selected the best.

Voting took place from November 9 to December 15 2015, after which it was decided which projects would be put into practice.

Each municipality selected one or more projects to finance from their budgets. Some will be setting up gyms in the open air, others constructing lakes, erecting fountains in public places, building playgrounds and much more.

Prior to the adoption of the budget, all the municipalities also held local budget forums where local residents, representatives of the business community and the media, as well as citizens’ associations discussed the 2016 budget.

The project includes ten municipalities – Sombor, Knjazevac, Trstenik, Pancevo, Zrenjanin, Pirot, Ruma, Sabac, Sremska Mitrovica and Vracar.

The aim of the Participatory Budgeting project in the 10 local communities is to introduce the practice of public participation in the decision-making process on local budgets.

Court and Ministry Fined for Obstructing BIRN Serbia

The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance handed down fines to the High Court in Belgrade and the Ministry of Justice at the end of November because both institutions failed to provide documents requested by BIRN Serbia journalists related to the arrest and extradition of Darko Saric, the alleged leader of a powerful Balkan criminal organization.

The commissioner ordered the Ministry of Justice to pay a fine of 20,000 dinars, as well as to deliver the requested information to BIRN Serbia, noting that failure to do so would result in it having to pay an additional 180,000 dinars.

The fine was imposed because the ministry did not comply with the commissioner’s decision in May this year, when he ordered the ministry to provide BIRN Serbia with documentation on Saric’s extradition.

The Higher Court in Belgrade will have to pay a fine of 180,000 dinars, because even after it was originally fined 20,000 dinars, the court didn’t make the required information available to BIRN Serbia.

If the High Court still refuses to comply with the law, the procedure will fall under the responsibility of the government of Serbia.

However, according to previous statements made by the commissioner, practice has shown that the government does not take action to resolve such matters.

BIRN Serbia requested the information and documentation from the Ministry of Justice and the High Court in Belgrade in February this year because the public still doesn’t known the circumstances of Darko Saric arrest – whether he was extradited and from which country, or if he voluntarily surrendered after his lawyer negotiated terms with the Ministry of Justice.

Serbian Telecoms Company Pays Bank Chief’s Debt

In its latest investigation, BIRN Serbia has revealed that state-owned Serbian telecommunications company, Telekom Srbija, paid off almost 78,000 euros of debt for Serbian National Bank governor Jorgovanka Tabakovic which she owed for her four-bedroom flat in Novi Sad.

Tabakovic signed a contract for the purchase of part of the apartment, measuring 144 square metres, with the state-owned Public Enterprise of PTT ‘Srbija’ on May 30, 2000, when she was serving as Minister for Economic and Ownership Transformation under the Socialist government of Mirko Marjanovic.

According to the documentation that BIRN Serbia obtained, that agreement gave Tabakovic ownership of 94 square meters (65 per cent) of the apartment, for which she paid 8,822.60 Deutschmarks (DM) at the time.

Tabakovic was supposed to pay off 92,170 DM for the remaining 35 per cent of the apartment over the following 40 years, plus interest.

However, she has not made a single monthly payment, and the contractual obligations to pay off the debt plus interest were taken over by Telekom Srbija three months after she took office as governor of the Serbian National Bank.

Entire article written on Serbian language can be found at http://javno.rs/istrazivanja/telekom-otplatio-guvernerkin-dug-za-stan

Austrian Bank Denies Releasing BIRN Statements

The Austrian Raiffeisen Bank has denied releasing financial statements relating to an account held by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, to the Serbian daily tabloid newspaper Informer.

“It has been confirmed with certainty that the information on the influx [of money] on your account, published in Informer daily, has not come out of the bank. The published document is not the document from Raiffeisen bank,” the bank said in a statement given to BIRN on Tuesday.

“We don’t know on what way Informer daily came into the possession of the information,” the statement added.

The document in question – which is not legally obtainable – was published in the controversial tabloid on Monday and purports to be a BIRN financial statement from Raiffeisen Bank. The document was published as part of an Informer article claiming that the European Commission is “directly funding attempts to bring Vucic down and instigate chaos in Serbia.”

The story claimed that the European Commission has paid a total of €86, 870, 12 to BIRN “for spitting on Vucic”.

“The donation from the EU commission is just one of the payments made from abroad to news networks, who’s only purpose is launching false affairs and instigating chaos,” the Informer story alleged.

The bank has not commented on whether the document published by Informer was a forgery or if it was released by another source. In addition, the bank did not elaborate on why they are sure the document is not authentic.

Journalists ‘can’t obtain financial statements’

Miodrag Vukovic, a lawyer and former Interior Ministry officer, said that obtaining financial statements is only possible for the authorities under very specific regulations and procedures. They can use the obtained documents in criminal procedures, “but if they are not used, they have to be destroyed”.

“No journalist in the regular procedure would be approved by a bank to get access to such information. It simply is not possible, because there is no basis on which you can call to get such information,” Vukovic said.

Informer published another article on Tuesday denouncing BIRN and two other independent media organizations, KRIK and CINS, claiming that foreign grants were given to all three on dates that coincide with the publication of “false affairs against people close to the government”.

The latest story has followed a series of defamatory allegations by Informer – which has links to Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic – accusing BIRN, KRIK and CINS of acting as “foreign mercenaries” and trying to “bring down our government”.

The latest allegations appear on this occasion to be wrapped up in a tabloid feud between Informer and its Belgrade-based rival newspaper Kurir.

The situation escalated on November 8, when Informer’s editor in chief, Dragan Vucicevic, appeared in a special programme on the TV Pink channel called Bringing down Vucic. In the four-hour show he accused Kurir’s owner, Aleksandar Rodic, of being a racketeer, and BIRN, CINS and KRIK of “receiving money from abroad to bring down Vucic and to have a Serbia without a prime minister”.

Government to stop with witch hunt

BIRN Serbia calls representatives of the Serbian government to stop deceiving the public and participating in the campaign against civil society organisations, which report professionally and objectively on the work of Serbian institutions.

We request that instead of suppressing dissenting voices, the government create an environment where organisations that point to criminal actions and corruption will be involved in debate on fundamental issues in our society in a fair and free manner.

Instead of openness to criticism, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic has joined an ongoing campaign led by major Serbian tabloids against independent media outlets such as the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, Serbia’s Centre for Investigative Journalist, CINS, and the Crime and Corruption Reporting Network, KRIK.

In the television show Cirilica [Cyrillic], broadcast on Serbia-wide Happy TV on November 9, Prime Minister Vucic once again accused those pointing to corruption in the state of aiming to overthrow the Serbian government. These government watchdogs, BIRN Serbia included, are accused of using lies to attack the state.

It is an extremely dangerous environment when the prime minister is using his position to dismiss opponents, qualifying them as mobsters, thieves and criminals despite no evidence or opportunity for them to defend themselves. This creates an atmosphere where unpredictable and sometimes lethal consequences exist.

During his interview with Happy TV, Prime Minister Vucic voiced his support of the theory that independent investigative centres in Serbia are paid by foreign donors to destabilise the government.

The day prior, the interior minister Nebojsa Stefanovic addressed the same theory in his appearance on national broadcaster TV Pink’s programme Teska rec. He used his public podium to express allegations that BIRN, CINS and KRIK are being financed exclusively by foreign donations. This approach suggests that BIRN’s financing is controversial.

We would like to remind the public that BIRN is not exclusively financed from foreign funders, but also with taxpayers’ money through the government’s office for cooperation with civil society. BIRN Serbia is not a phantom organisation on a secret mission to cause unrest, but an organisation that has worked in Serbia for ten years, in accordance to all the laws of our state. BIRN Serbia also makes all data, including financial records, publically available through the competent bodies.

The latest attacks are merely a continuation of the campaign against BIRN, which started in April 2014. The initial attack was sparked when BIRN published the draft agreement between the Serbian government and Etihad Airways, which showed that the state had paid more for its stake in carrier Air Serbia than it had revealed to the public. That campaign reached a peak earlier this year after an investigation into the controversial tender for de-watering Serbia’s biggest mine, Tamnava, was published. To this day, the findings have not been denied.

BIRN believes that this continual campaign was directed at discrediting the organisation in the absence of arguments, which would deny the findings of our published investigations.

Serbian Minister Questions BIRN Credibility Due to Foreign Funding

Serbian interior minister questioned credibility of BIRN as the funding of organization comes only from abroad, after a week of campaign against independent investigative journalism organizations in tabloid media.

In an unprecedented live four hours long program on one of the most popular pro government national TV stations PINK, Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, KRIK – Network for Investigating Crime and Corruption, CINS – Serbia’s Centre for Investigative Journalism, were one more time labelled as “foreign mercenaries” who are participating with other actors in what the station called attack on Serbian Prime Minister Aleksansader Vucic.

Serbian interior minister Nebojsa Stefanovic questioned the good intentions of BIRN investigations “as it is strange that all the funding comes from foreign donations” and that no domestic money was ever given to the organisation.

He also argued that investigations done by BIRN and other investigative organisations in Serbia should not be taken for granted.

Dragana Zarkovic, director of BIRN Serbia, says however her organization did reserve funding from Serbian instutitions.

“Office for cooperation with civil sector, which is body of Serbian government , is one of our funders. In 2015 they were supporting our Participative budgeting programme, which enables public consultations in local budgets drafting,” Zarkovic said.

  Owner and editor of pro-government tabloid Informer, Dragan Vucicevic, who was also part of the special program, said that BIRN is “financed to overthrow Vucic’s government, in order to fulfil their campaign to have a Serbia without a Prime Minister”.

“They (BIRN, CINS and KRIK) use lies to destabilize the country, I have proof of everything,” Vucicevic said on Sunday.

He also said that all investigations produced by BIRN and others are “invented affairs”, aimed to cause unrests like in the countries of the region, citing examples of Montenegro, Kosovo and Macedonia.

As a ‘prof’ Vucicevic took out financial records of BIRN, arguing that “direct payoff of the EU came in February”, just after the article BIRN published on alleged corruption in Tamnava mine.

Vucicevic was referring to a grant BIRN got through a fair competition at the EU tender for investigations as part of the program for Serbia, Media Freedom.

BIRN Serbia Journalist Addresses Media Financing Seminar

Tanja Maksic of BIRN Serbia spoke at a seminar entitled ‘Public Interest for Citizens and Media and a New Way of Financing Media Content’ on September 17.

At the seminar, Maksic presented recommendations for improving practices in competitive funding for local governments, which play a major role in the implementation of media reforms, as well as the findings of monitoring by BIRN Serbia.

For the fourth year in a row, BIRN Serbia has been collecting data and recording models of budget spending in the media sector.

The data showed that nearly three billion dinars was spent in the media sector by 33 local governments in the period from 2011 to 2013.

The seminar was organized by Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities, in cooperation with Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia, the Ministry of Culture and Information, the EU Delegation and the OSCE Mission in Serbia, with the support of the Open Society Foundation.

Serbia Media Report Says ‘Soft Censorship’ Persists

Soft censorship continues to be a major threat to press freedom in the country, concludes the ‘Media Reform Stalled in the Slow Lane: Soft Censorship in Serbia 2015 Update’ report.

The Serbian government appears unwilling to follow recommendations that would guarantee a non-discriminatory allocation of public funds and government advertising across the media, the report says.

Biased subsidies to media outlets, selective government advertising contracts, and manipulation regarding licensing persists in the country, it suggests. The lack of transparency and record keeping is still a severe challenge in assessing the full extent and impact of soft censorship in Serbia.

The report registers small improvements to the media-related legal framework in Serbia, such as thenew Law on Public Information and Media which regulates financial relations between the state and media outlets.

It concludes that state spending in Serbia’s media sector requires fundamental and urgent reform to ensure that taxpayers’ money is no longer used to impose soft censorship, and instead to offer public information through free, independent and pluralistic media that facilitates informed democratic participation.

The report, prepared by Tanja Maksic in cooperation with the BIRN Serbia team, is one of a series in an ongoing project on soft censorship around the world led by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) and the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA).

The research covers government entities at national and local level, as well as public companies (companies owned or controlled by the state). It’s an update of the January 2014 report, ‘Soft Censorship: Strangling Serbia’s Media’.

Get the report here:

Media Reform Stalled in the Slow Lane: Soft Censorship in Serbia 2015 Update.

BIRN Serbia Holds ‘Participatory Budgeting’ Workshops

The workshops at the Kopaonik mountain resort were attended by representatives of the finance and PR departments of ten Serbian municipalities.

How to involve the public in decisions about budgets for 2016? How to improve communication with citizens? These were just some of the questions that 18 local government representatives had the opportunity to get answers to at the workshops that were held from August 28 to 30.

The workshops looked at the weaknesses and strengths of the concept of participatory budgeting also, as well as activity plans for the future implementation of the participatory budgeting project.

Financial consultant Jovanka Manic gave advice for improving budgeting and Tatjana Vojtehovski spoke about communications, while the participants raised questions about both issues during discussions that followed.

The project includes nine municipalities – Sombor, Knjazevac, Trstenik, Pancevo, Zrenjanin, Pirot, Ruma, Sabac and Sremska Mitrovica.

BIRN Serbia Issues Data Journalism Handbook

BIRN Serbia has published the first handbook on data journalism in Serbia featuring tips, tricks and tutorials all in one place. The handbook offers all the basic knowledge for how to work with data and to conduct journalistic research from start to finish.

In this handbook is systematic knowledge and experience gained through various research projects. It contains answers to the question of what data journalism is, which are the most important tools to collect, analyse, organise and present information, how to get data in Serbia, as well as advice and practical examples from those who are already proficient in this new form of journalism .

The handbook is available in electronic formats: PDF, ePub and Mobi.

To read e-books in .epub and .mobi format, you need to install an electronic reader on your cellphone or tablet. One popular free applications for Android is Moon Reader.

To reading e-books on the iPhone or iPad, we recommend TotalReader.