About statement of Prime minister in National Assembly’s sitting on 7. 4. 2015.
President of the Government in yesterday’s debate with its political opponents spoke of issue unrelated to "Lex Specialis" and "Belgrade Waterfront" project thereby mentioning our organization. Namely, he spoke of Democratic Party credit with Development Bank of Vojvodina, without bill, of three million Euros and that he "believes that Transparency - Serbia will react and that Nemanja Nenadić will explain certain things about this issue".
If the Prime minister has missed it, we remind that Transparency - Serbia and Mr. Nenadić personally have went public related to various problematic aspects of credits to political parties for campaign financing, during the Law drafting (2011), and its implementation. For example, in the report on financing of parliamentary and presidential campaign for elections in 2012 we stated following:
Campaign financing from credits can be controversial from various reasons. For example due to fact that certain credits essentially contain element of gift (e. g. if there is no interest, if the interest is below market price, if the payment can be postponed to a longer period of time). For such situations law maker posed legal obstacle requesting reporting on credits that are received under more favourable conditions than the market ones as donation (none of the parties have reported such credit for this campaign). However, questions related to credits still remain. Above all, it remains unknown from which sources will the credits be returned and when will it be done. Payment from budget allocations intended for regular work of political subjects would represent inappropriate spending of budget assets and is inacceptable as such. Even when sources of credit payment are private (e. g. donations, property incomes) "technical" problem still exists - every income intended for election campaign should be paid to special account and presented in the report - however, reports are already delivered and additional deadlines for reporting do not exist. Finally, there is specific problem with credits taken from banks that are partially owned by the state. Law treats credits as "financing from private sources" in one provision, while in other forbids the parties to be financed by the „enterprises with certain percentage of state capital”. This could be interpreted as taking credit for the campaign from the bank that is even partially owned by the state, being illegal, having in mind that the banks can be considered as mentioned "enterprises". For the purpose of campaign financing in may elections DP took a credit with Development Bank of Vojvodina and G17 Plus and SRS with Commercial Bank. Both of these banks are at least partially state owned.
Specific recommendations that we have given in the past years that the problem of giving credit to parties should be resolved, remained without reaction. Although Anti-Corruption Strategy envisages amendments of the Law on Financing of Political Activities for resolving of numerous problems recognized by the end of 2014, still haven’t reached the agenda. In the meantime, several articles of this Law were changed, to preposition of SNS deputy group, but unfortunately not the provisions that deal with credits.
Having in mind that data on bank operations are available only to state control organs, and not to complete public, they are the only entities who can and should give answers to specific questions - whether this credit is awarded against bank rules, whether it can be considered as donation (e. g. whether conditions are more favourable than the ones given to other clients), whether there were abuses of bank managers and similar.
[1]Comment of TS to discussion on this Draft Law is available at http://goo.gl/hkYWGa
