Criminal Complaint Filed Against PIO Fund Chief Ognjenovic

The Ustavobranitelji association of lawyers has filed a criminal complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime against Relja Ognjenovic, general director of the Republic Fund for Pension and Disability Insurance (Fund PIO). The complaint was signed on the association’s behalf by its co presidents, lawyers Jovan Rajic, Cedomir Kokanovic and Ivan Ninic. Ognjenovic is accused of two criminal offenses, abuse of official position under Article 359 of the Criminal Code and unauthorized processing of personal data under Article 146, for allegedly allowing the Fund PIO database to be used for the mass distribution of letters to pensioners signed and stamped with a photograph of Aleksandar Vucic.

What Ognjenovic Is Accused Of

According to the criminal complaint, Ognjenovic, from August to September 2026, abused his official position and exceeded his authority by making pensioners’ personal data, including first and last name, unique citizen identification number and home address, available without authorization. The filers claim this data was handed over to the institution of the President of the Republic and to Vucic personally, enabling the printing and delivery of roughly 1.65 million letters to pensioners’ home addresses across Serbia.

The complaint puts particular weight on a technical argument: sending letters individually addressed to each recipient’s first and last name, at that scale, would not have been feasible, the filers say, without pulling the Fund PIO’s updated database in full. From this they conclude that access to the data must have been approved at the top of the institution.

“Relja Ognjenovic knew that the institution of the President of the Republic has no legal basis nor written consent from citizens to access, obtain and process these records,” the Ustavobranitelji complaint states, adding that the Fund’s official resources must not be used for party or personal political purposes.

The filers are asking the Prosecution for Organized Crime to act urgently: to seize servers and electronic devices at Fund PIO to secure evidence, to question Ognjenovic and witnesses, and they also propose that detention be considered, citing the risk of evidence destruction, witness tampering and repeat offending.

Part of the argument rests on the fact that Vucic has publicly announced his candidacy for prime minister on behalf of the SNS in the upcoming parliamentary elections. The filers see this as an abuse of public office for campaign purposes, in other words the use of a state resource, in this case a database and the postal network, to gain an advantage ahead of the election race itself. Along with the letters, the complaint states, Post of Serbia workers were also instructed to collect phone numbers and signed consent for further communication from recipients, which the filers describe as an additional layer of data processing carried out without any legal basis.

Post of Serbia’s Response

Post of Serbia, which N1 asked who had commissioned the campaign, says it is a regular service and not an election campaign. According to the company, it introduced the digital ePostar service on June 7, an electronic delivery option under Article 24 of the Law on Postal Services, and phone numbers are collected only with the consent of users who opt for that type of delivery, in line with the Law on Personal Data Protection.

Pavle Dimitrijevic of Crta told N1 the campaign is problematic on several fronts at once, starting with the fact that the alleged client behind the job was a state pension and disability insurance fund, and extending to postal workers effectively being asked to survey letter recipients on their consent to further contact. Neither Fund PIO nor the institution of the President of the Republic had responded to the claims in the criminal complaint by the time this article was published.

Srpske vesti reported in late August on Vucic’s announcement that pensions would rise to 545 euros starting December 1, an announcement that preceded the wave of letters bearing his signature. Whether the Prosecution for Organized Crime will register the Ustavobranitelji complaint as a case and open a review of the claims about access to the Fund PIO database, and on what timeline such a decision might come, remains unknown for now.