Category: Above the law
Period: from May 2021
Outcome: Complaint dismissed or proceedings halted (as of 13 Oct 2022)
Aleksandar Šapić, then president of the Novi Beograd municipality and vice-president of the SNS, extended his flat in Bežanijska kosa to three levels in 2021 without a building permit, according to BIRN. A month after he became mayor of Belgrade, the municipality he had run for ten years legalised the 340-square-metre flat, even though, according to BIRN, the property did not exist in that form in 2015, which is a legal requirement. Because of the legalisation, the prosecution dismissed a criminal complaint. Šapić says he built no extension and is suing BIRN over the article about it.
Aleksandar Šapić, then head of the New Belgrade municipality and from May 2021 vice-president of the SNS, extended his flat in Bežanijska Kosa across three levels during 2021 without a building permit, according to documents and satellite images gathered by BIRN. He only had approval for investment maintenance work on the flat, which measured about 149 square metres.
In July 2021, the city building inspectorate ordered Šapić to stop work immediately and obtain a permit. He kept building and appealed to the Ministry of Construction. In October 2021, under minister Tomislav Momirović, the ministry annulled the inspectorate's decision and sent the case back to the start.
Ljubinko Pejović, the neighbour who reported the construction, told BIRN he had struggled to find a lawyer willing to take the case.
In late July 2022, a month after Šapić became mayor of Belgrade, the New Belgrade municipality, which he had run for ten years, legalised a seven-room flat with 340 square metres of usable floor space (403 square metres gross). According to BIRN, the structure in that form did not exist on the 2015 satellite image, and existing on it is a legal requirement for legalisation.
Because of the legalisation, the inspectorate halted its proceedings, and on 7 September 2022 the Third Basic Public Prosecutor's Office dismissed the criminal complaint for building without a permit. No outcome has been found for the objection to the dismissal of the criminal complaint.
Šapić says he only repaired the roof and facade and joined his flat with his father's, and that the building was legalised at the request of its previous owners, filed in 2010. The opposition called for his removal, but on 29 November 2022 the motion won 44 of 110 votes in the City Assembly.
In March 2023, Šapić sued BIRN, editor-in-chief Milorad Ivanović and journalist Radmilo Marković over an article about the legalisation of his property, seeking six million dinars. At the same time he also sued BIRN, again for six million, over an article about the villa in Trieste; the hearings in that case closed on 29 September 2026. BIRN calls both lawsuits SLAPPs.
The first hearing in the legalisation case was not held at the Higher Court in Belgrade until 8 October 2026. According to Raskrikavanje, Šapić claimed he had built no additions and that it had not bothered him that part of the building he bought had not been legalised. The journalists are due to be heard in January 2027.