SNS Call Center Case: Three Years, No Hearings
CINS reports that Serbia's Interior Ministry has not interviewed a single person three years after a criminal complaint over the SNS call center, despite repeated requests from prosecutors.
The First Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade told the Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia (CINS) in late August 2026 that the Interior Ministry’s review of the so called SNS call center has still not included a single interview. “No interview with anyone as a citizen has been conducted so far within the Interior Ministry’s review,” the prosecution’s response reads. On July 8, 2026, the case was transferred from the Interior Ministry’s Department for Combating Economic Crime to its Anti-Corruption Department, but even that move has not brought the process any further.
The case traces back to an investigation CINS published in November 2023. A reporter for the outlet infiltrated a call center run by the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and recorded a conversation in which voting for SNS in the upcoming elections, and photographing the ballot as proof, was set as a condition for being hired. According to that investigation, the workers were organized through the hostess agency M&J Lady, while cash fees were paid out at the premises of the association Centar za edukaciju i razvoj omladine Beograda (CEROB), the Center for the Education and Development of Belgrade Youth. Jelena Jerinic and Djordje Pavicevic, opposition candidates for parliament at the time, filed a criminal complaint on the basis of that investigation, alleging unauthorized collection of personal data, violation of equality, failure to withhold and pay tax, and giving and receiving bribes connected to voting.
The prosecution had already ordered the police, back in December 2023, to gather information on the case. It briefly passed through the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade (VJT), which returned it to the First Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office (First Basic PPO) in early 2024, explaining that neither the complainants nor the prosecution had submitted proof that a crime had been committed. Since then, the prosecution has sent the police three follow up requests. None produced a result, until July this year, when the Interior Ministry simply moved the case within its own structure, without a single interview of a citizen or a suspect, and then announced it would “submit a report to the First Basic PPO for further jurisdiction and action once the checks are completed.”
Why the case landed in the anti-corruption department
Lawyer and former assistant prosecutor Vladimir Tupanjac told CINS that the very fact the case was forwarded specifically to the Interior Ministry’s Anti-Corruption Department could suggest police suspect a crime from that category was committed. He raised the question, however, of what that assessment is actually based on.
“If police have not questioned anyone as a suspect or as a citizen for almost three years, the question is what they based their conclusion on that the case should be taken over precisely by the anti-corruption department.”
Tupanjac added that the Criminal Procedure Code gave the prosecution the authority not to simply wait on the police this whole time, since it could have gathered information from citizens on its own, requested documentation from companies, or launched disciplinary proceedings against officers who failed to act on its requests.
“Based on how things have been handled so far, one could conclude that the police and the prosecution are accomplices in covering up a crime. The police, because for almost three years they have not obtained the requested information, and the prosecution, because it has not used all the legal mechanisms available to it.”
Sinisa Jankovic, a retired police inspector, says the Interior Ministry could have forwarded the request to another department earlier too, and that the real problem is that the case sat unprocessed for three years.
“The failure of Interior Ministry officials to act points to the criminal offense of abuse of official position, because they did not take the actions they should have in a timely manner.”
The case has already bounced between prosecutors once
According to Tupanjac, the SNS call center case could once again be transferred, this time from the First Basic PPO to the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade, should the Interior Ministry’s Anti-Corruption Department determine there are grounds to suspect a crime falling under the jurisdiction of the VJT’s Special Anti-Corruption Department. The case has, in fact, already crossed paths with that prosecutor’s office once. The First Basic PPO had earlier forwarded it over suspicion of giving and receiving bribes connected to voting, but the VJT returned the complaint in early 2024, explaining that no proof had been submitted that a crime had been committed. At the time, Tupanjac told CINS that the published recording and other information from the investigation were sufficient for the prosecution to check the allegations and gather additional evidence.
“The Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office’s failure to act on this criminal complaint, and its disregard of publicly published information, creates the impression among the public that our institutions are captured, and that prosecutors are passing responsibility among themselves.”
Nemanja Nenadic, program director of Transparency Serbia, says this is one of the best documented cases of a violation of election campaign financing rules, and that the proceedings should have been urgent.
“A process that was supposed to be urgent has dragged on so long that it looks like we will reach the next parliamentary elections without any resolution at all.”
Alongside the criminal complaint, Transparency Serbia also filed a complaint with the Anti-Corruption Agency over the call center case. In its response to the agency, SNS denied organizing and financing the call center’s operations, while the agency M&J Lady and the association CEROB likewise denied any connection to its work. Despite those denials, CINS published recordings and other findings pointing to their role. The case has since made its way into the final report of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) on Serbia’s elections, which cited the CINS investigation in the context of unwanted calls to citizens, pressure on voters, and problems with campaign financing by third parties.
Three years after the prosecution’s first order, the file still does not contain a single completed interview, and the only thing that has changed in the meantime is the name of the Interior Ministry department handling it. Whether that will be enough to move the investigation itself will become clear in the coming months, before, as Nenadic warns, the next parliamentary elections arrive.
