Prosecutors open case over SNS Arena rally funding
Belgrade's Third Basic Public Prosecutor's Office is examining how the SNS rally at Belgrade Arena was paid for, and the Roma Party has offered a list of witnesses, bus owners among them.
The Third Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade has opened a case file and is conducting a preliminary inquiry into how the SNS rally at Belgrade Arena was financed. The rally was held in late March this year. The inquiry follows a criminal complaint filed by Srdjan Milivojevic, president of the Democratic Party, against Milos Vucevic, president of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).
The complaint rests on the Law on Financing Political Activities and on the claim that people were paid to show up at a party event. Reporters from N1 wrote back in March that cash was handed out at the rally. Four months passed between that reporting and the confirmation that prosecutors have an open file.
What is the Roma Party offering?
The Roma Party announced on July 29 that it is ready to hand prosecutors a list of people who should be questioned. Its statement spells out who, in the party’s view, knows most about how the crowd was assembled:
These are people with first-hand knowledge, or people who took part directly in organising and financing the effort to fill the rally
The party singles out the transport operators as well. “The owners of the buses that carried participants also belong among the key witnesses,” the same statement says. The Roma Party adds that reimbursing activists for real costs is not what bothers it; the question is where money that appears in no ledger comes from. By its own estimate, millions of euros went unrecorded.
Where the law draws the line
The Law on Financing Political Activities prohibits:
- hidden cash payments outside a party’s official accounts
- illegal campaign financing
- paying citizens simply to attend a gathering
At this stage prosecutors are gathering information. Opening a case file does not mean an indictment will follow, and it establishes no one’s responsibility. For now Vucevic faces the allegations of a complaint filed by a political opponent, and nothing beyond that has been confirmed.
The sequence is short and easy to check: the Arena rally in late March, reports of cash changing hands immediately afterwards, then a criminal complaint from an opposition leader. The file now sits with the Third Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office, and on the day that became public a small party stepped forward saying it has names. The next move belongs to the prosecutor: whether the Roma Party’s list is accepted at all, and whether the people on it are summoned.
