Serbian political party spending to be audited by the Serbian State Audit Institution (DRI)

Serbian political party spending will be audited by a special team of auditors from the Serbian State Audit Institution (DRI), who will be tasked with supervision over how parties in Serbia spend funds they receive from the state budget, the Serbian newswire, Tanjug, reported Sept. 2.

 “The Serbian State Audit Institution (DRI) will draw up a schedule of audits by the end of October or beginning of November, although the list of political parties to be audited will remain secret,” the newswire reported.

 Radoslaw Sretenovic, a chairman of the DRI council, said that DRI will choose several parliamentary parties to be audited. The chairman also added that in 2015 auditors will go through annual financial reports focusing on party campaign spending.

 “We have already reached agreements in principle with audit institutions in Montenegro, Croatia and Israel, which have experience in this type of control, to help train our team,” Sretenovic said, as cited by the newswire. “We are yet to establish the criteria for auditing the parliamentary parties.”

 “Perhaps we will concentrate on those parties that receive the highest subsidy from the state budget, however, it is also possible that some smaller parties or even entire coalitions will be included on the list of parties to be audited,”Stretenovic added.

 The fact that DRI will start auditing annual statements filed by Serbian parliamentary parties will not change the location of the files, which are held in the database of parties’ financial activities managed by the Serbian Anti-Corruption Agency.

Photo courtesy of Ijanderson977.