Association Civic Initiative Demands from Gov’t To Discontinue Abuse of Anti-Money Laundering Law

Association Civic Initiative, logo

An association of citizens, Civic Initiatives, on July 28 demanded from the Serbian government to immediately discontinued abusing mechanisms for the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing for the purpose of intimidating organizations, media outlets and individuals who served as controllers of the authorities.

In a statement, the association said that a letter of the Office for the Prevention of Money Laundering to banks, seeking from data on financial transactions of 57 organizations, media outlets and individuals that were mainly dealing with human rights, war crimes and government monitoring, represented the abuse of legal mechanisms and state resources.

Under Article 73 of the Law on the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing, the Office for the Prevention of Money Laundering can request information from a bank only if an entity or an individual are suspected of performing such transactions, while the Office does have discretionary power to check the entities when there is no suspicion whatsoever , according to the association’s release.   

The statement recalled that the Office director, Zeljko Radovanovic, had told news program Newsmax Adria that such checks were “regular activities to assess the risk of terrorist financing and not any sort of investigation or classification of the organization in question as criminal groups.”