Roma Party Offers Witness List Over SNS Rally Cash
As the Third Basic Public Prosecutor's Office opens a pre-investigation into Milos Vucevic, the Roma Party says it can name the people who know who paid for the crowd at the Arena rally.
The Third Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade has opened a case file and launched a pre-investigation against Milos Vucevic, leader of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), over cash handed to people bussed in for the party’s rally at the Belgrade Arena. The Roma Party responded by saying it is ready to give prosecutors a list of people who should be questioned.
The criminal complaint was filed by Srdjan Milivojevic, leader of the Democratic Party, after reporters from N1 television documented how extras were recruited and how daily allowances were paid out in cash ahead of the rally held in late March 2026.
Who does the Roma Party want questioned?
Its statement makes clear these are not ordinary attendees but people who worked inside the operation of filling the hall.
These are persons with direct knowledge, or who took part directly in organising and financing the effort to swell the rally.
The party singles out the owners of the buses that carried participants to the Arena. By the logic of that statement, they are the only ones who know exactly how many vehicles were hired, who ordered the transport and how it was settled.
The Roma Party also draws a line that tends to blur in public argument. It says there is nothing wrong with reimbursing an activist for costs incurred that day. What is wrong is where the money came from. The statement speaks of millions of euros in unrecorded funds, and asks whether payments followed lawful documentation or lists carrying personal data that enjoys special legal protection.
What the law says
Lawyer Nikola Lakic argues that paying citizens to attend a party gathering is a question of statute, not of taste.
The law clearly sets out how political parties may spend money, but it also contains clear prohibitions, such as hidden cash payment, illegal campaign financing and payment for attendance at gatherings outside the party’s official accounts.
The basic offence carries three months to three years in prison. If the sum obtained exceeds 1.5 million dinars, the range rises to one to eight years. There is a further consequence that gets less attention and hurts a party treasury more: partial or total loss of state budget funding in the following budget years.
Lakic does not expect the case to travel far.
In Vucic’s Serbia it is hard to expect any proceedings to be launched against his adviser, and the last thing we can expect is criminal proceedings against SNS leader Milos Vucevic, because Serbia has no independent and autonomous prosecution service with the courage to run cases like this one.
Four months between the rally and the file
Four months passed between the late March rally and the opening of the case file. Nemanja Nenadic, programme director of Transparency Serbia, assessed that opening a file on its own means close to nothing, and pointed to the second track: the party must report campaign spending, and those reports are checked by the Anti-Corruption Agency.
That leaves one concrete thing still ahead. If prosecutors take up the Roma Party’s offer, the first names on the list are not officials but hauliers, and their contracts, invoices and trip orders exist on paper regardless of whose hands the cash ended up in.
