Category: Money and deals
Period: from Jul 2012
Outcome: Complaint dismissed or proceedings halted (as of Aug 2017)
Aleksandar Vulin, then director of the Government Office for Kosovo and Metohija, bought a flat in Zvezdara with his wife in 2012 and told the Anti-Corruption Agency that his wife's aunt in Canada had lent him €205,000. The Agency found there was no valid evidence for this and reported him in 2015, but the police spoke neither to Vulin nor to the lender, and the First Basic Public Prosecutor's Office dismissed the complaint because the flat had been declared to the Agency. The Administration for the Prevention of Money Laundering classified its findings as strictly confidential.
Aleksandar Vulin, then director of the Government Office for Kosovo and Metohija, bought a 107-square-metre flat in Zvezdara with his wife in 2012. He first told the Anti-Corruption Agency that he had got the money by selling a flat in Novi Sad, and then that his wife's aunt in Canada had lent him €205,000.
The Agency found there was no valid evidence for this: the money had not gone through any bank account and had not been declared at customs, and the receipt bore no signature from the lender.
In December 2015, the Agency reported Vulin to the Prosecutor's Office for Organised Crime. A year and a half later, the police had spoken to only three of those involved, but not to Vulin or the woman who lent him the money.
In 2017, the Prosecutor's Office for Organised Crime concluded that there were no elements of a criminal offence within its jurisdiction, and the First Basic Public Prosecutor's Office dismissed the complaint because the flat had been declared to the Agency.
The public learned of the case only when KRIK, after the Information Commissioner intervened, published the Agency report in September 2017. Vulin then said he had brought the money into the country "nine thousand at a time" in euros, and his Movement of Socialists insulted KRIK editor Stevan Dojčinović in a series of statements; Dojčinović sued the party.
The Administration for the Prevention of Money Laundering first classified its findings as strictly confidential, and after they were declassified in 2018 the names of the parties to the €204,800 transaction remained redacted.
In July 2023 the US Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on Vulin, then director of the BIA, over corruption, alleged involvement in drug trafficking and ties to arms dealer Slobodan Tešić; the justification presents no evidence. Vulin resigned as BIA director in November 2023.