Novi Sad: 7 million dinars for 19 projects that never ran

Officers of the Interior Ministry’s Criminal Police Directorate, Anti-Corruption Service, arrested J. C. (33) in Novi Sad, the representative of a citizens’ association, on suspicion of the continuing criminal offence of abuse of position by a responsible person. The arrest was announced on July 28, 2026.

He is accused of misspending, between 2020 and 2025, funds paid to the association by city administrations of Novi Sad and by provincial secretariats. According to the Interior Ministry, the contracted obligations were not fulfilled, and the budgets of the City of Novi Sad and the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina were damaged by 7,040,000 dinars.

The case is being handled by the Special Department for Combating Corruption at the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Novi Sad. Prosecutors say the association was awarded more than seven million dinars to carry out 19 projects. The association is the Centre for Local Youth Activism Futura from Novi Sad.

How were workshops that never happened accounted for?

According to the investigation, the project activities were never carried out. Prosecutors allege that the suspect submitted reports to the funding bodies describing activities on projects that never took place, among them workshops and lectures.

That, in the prosecution’s account, is the core of the case. Money for youth projects is not paid out in a single instalment. It is justified through documentation on activities delivered, and the final report is the last checkpoint before the funds are recognised as spent in line with the contract. If that report is false, the control mechanism has nothing left to stand on.

This is also why the charge is framed as a continuing offence. Under that legal construct, a series of separate acts committed over a longer period and following the same pattern is treated in law as a single offence. Here the span is five years and 19 separate projects, which allows prosecutors to treat the whole sequence as one case rather than 19 unrelated ones.

None of the allegations has yet been tested in court. The prosecution is at the stage of setting out grounds for suspicion, not proven facts.

What comes after the 48-hour detention

The suspect has been ordered held for up to 48 hours. He will be brought before the competent prosecutor’s office along with a criminal complaint, where questioning follows. The prosecutor then decides whether to ask the court for custody or a lighter measure, such as a ban on leaving his place of residence.

In cases of this type the next step is usually a financial expert examination. The expert compares the agreed payment schedule, the submitted reports and the actual situation on the ground, and that finding later becomes one of the key pieces of evidence. Investigators also check in parallel whether the money ended up with third parties.

Until a final verdict, the suspect is presumed innocent. Guilt has not been established and cannot be inferred from police or prosecution statements, however detailed the allegations may be.

The case also raises a question that goes beyond one name. For years, grant schemes for youth projects have been treated as a minor line item in local government budgets in Serbia, and oversight has been proportionally light. Seven million dinars over five years is not a figure that sets off alarms on its own, but it is enough to show where the gaps in verification sit.

Should public administrations require on-site checks of completed projects rather than relying on paper reports alone?