Two CVs of Serbia’s finance minister to be

Outgoing Belgrade Mayor, nominee for Serbian Finance Minister Sinisa Mali is said to be a man with two CVs – his official CV on the web sites of the various bodies he has led claiming that he is a financial expert and a second one drawn up by investigative media and NGOs which claims that he was involved in scandals which have never been resolved.

MPs in the Serbian parliament on Monday entered into a heated debate over Mali’s nomination for Finance Minister, with the ruling coalition lending him support and the opposition claiming he is the worst possible candidate.

According to the Belgrade city hall web site, Mali holds a doctorate. The documents that accompanied his nomination by the Prime Minister claim that he is an economist who graduated and earned a master’s degree at the Belgrade University School of Economics, he earned a second master’s degree in the US and a doctorate at the Belgrade University School of Organizational Science in 2013.

That doctorate is the first point of dispute in his CV.

Several hundred members of the Serbian academic community are demanding that his doctorate be taken away, claiming that he plagiarised it. Belgrade University said it would be forming a new commission to look into his doctorate again.

The official biography says that he has had success as a businessman, that he formed a consultancy for the purchase and sale of companies but the media reported in 2015 that Mali is CEO of two off-shore companies involved in the purchase of 24 apartments in the Bulgarian holiday resort of St Nikola. Mali said later that he owns just one apartment in Bulgaria, adding that the scandal involved his consultancy before he took over as advisor to then deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic.

Serbia’s Anti-Corruption Agency launched proceedings in August 2016 to investigate his assets and income suspecting that he was CEO of two off-shore companies while in public office. Every subsequent report by the Agency noted that his assets and property increased constantly. The Higher Prosecution found no evidence of money laundering and sent the case to the First Basic Prosecution which only investigated whether Mali had reported all his assets when he took public office. Those proceedings are ongoing.

Sinisa Mali’s official CV says that the halved the city’s debt as Mayor of Belgrade. Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said the start of construction of the widely-disputed Belgrade Waterfront project is one of his top achievements and that is another point of dispute in his career. Several buildings in the Savamala neighborhood were razed to the ground by masked men with heavy machinery during his tenure as Mayor and no one was held accountable for the destruction.

Teme