Category: Above the law
Period: from May 2018
Outcome: Under investigation (as of 23 Sep 2024)
Aleksandar Šapić, then mayor of the Novi Beograd municipality and mayor of Belgrade since 2022, bought a 399-square-metre villa near Trieste for €820,000 in 2018, according to the contract and land registry records obtained by BIRN and Vreme, but declared a 150-square-metre flat at that address to the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption. The Agency has been checking his declarations since February 2019, yet in January 2023 it said it had only just opened a check; the outcome has not been published. Šapić says he declared his assets properly and is suing BIRN over its story about the villa.
Aleksandar Šapić, then mayor of the Novi Beograd municipality and mayor of Belgrade since 2022, bought a villa in Opicina near Trieste for €820,000 in May 2018, according to the sale contract and an extract from the Italian land registry obtained by BIRN and the weekly Vreme. According to the land registry, the villa has 399 square metres of gross floor area and 13 rooms, and comes with a 127-square-metre garage, part of the access road and a share in a woodland.
BIRN and Vreme reported in January 2023 that Šapić had not declared the villa to the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption: no property in his declarations matches its size, and the Agency told them that all of his declarations had been published. The Agency then said that in January 2019 Šapić had declared the purchase of a 150-square-metre flat in Trieste at that address, and that on 27 January 2023 it had opened an extraordinary check.
Šapić says he declared his assets properly and gave the Agency the contract; on TV Prva he said he entered 150 square metres because that is the living space, and that he did not know he had to declare the entire floor area.
In March 2023, Šapić sued BIRN, editor Milorad Ivanović and the article's authors, Jelena Veljković and Aleksandar Đorđević, seeking six million dinars in damages for mental anguish. At the same time, he filed a second lawsuit against BIRN over an article about the legalisation of his flat in Bežanijska Kosa. BIRN calls both lawsuits SLAPPs.
At the first hearing, in September 2024, Šapić said his secretary had filled in the form and asked the journalists who their source was. A letter from the Agency to the court revealed that it had been conducting an extraordinary review of his reports since February 2019, when it asked him for a contract, and that the review was still ongoing five years later.
After three hearings held and five cancelled, the proceedings were closed on 29 September 2026. Šapić did not attend, and the court will review his interview with TV Prva before delivering its verdict. The outcome of the Agency's review has not been published.