Birodi: State Mired in Corruption

Zoran Gavrilovic (BETAPHOTO/MEDIJA CENTAR BEOGRAD/MO)

Zoran Gavrilovic, executive director of the BIRODI Bureau of Social Research, said on Oct. 9 that, 20 years after the establishment of its first anti-corruption body, Serbia was a state mired in corruption, where assumed obligations were not met and anti-corruption agencies were collapsing inward.

Gavrilovic told BETA that the anniversary of the fight against corruption was coming at a time when the struggle was failing on the national level. He added that Serbia was not marking 20 years of the founding of the first anti-corruption body -- the Anti-Corruption Council this year, nor ten years since BIRODI proposed measures according to which local governments would be required to have anti-corruption plans and bodies -- which was accepted by the state and included in an action plan as recommended in 2004 by GRECO, the Council of Europe's corruption monitoring body.

"In the next round of evaluation, it is local efforts against corruption that will be GRECO's focus, which spells more trouble for the Serbian state, which does not want to take BIRODI's extended hand because the ruling party and president does not see us as an organization working in the public interest, but as a political opponent to the regime," Gavrilovic said.