THE BLACK BOOK OF NIS
Traces of Plunder of Previous Authorities
In almost all major cities, the departing socialists have left behind them an economic scenery resembling a region under "nuclear ashes" out of which very few things will grow in the near future. The new authorities have inherited only debts - in Belgrade the debt amounts to some 400 millions dinars, in Nis to 44 million dinars, Uzice 6 million - while the new authorities in Kragujevac have determined that, apart from the empty safebox, this town uses the truly unbelievable 4.69 percent of its capacities.
AIM, Belgrade, March 11, 1997
Soon after the start of a large-scale annulment and falsifying of the local election results in all major towns in Serbia, rumours started circulating that elections would not be recognized until all traces of dishonourable actions of previous authorities were removed from communes in which the opposition had won. Judging by almost three-month long reluctance to acknowledge the results of local elections, it could be said that the departing teams of socialist rule had really much to hide and cover up all over Serbia. In some places it was so much that even these three months were not enough. That is why the new authorities in many towns are preparing the publication of "black books" on the sins of their predecessors. Although most of these books will obviously have many missing pages, it seems that what remains behind (together with some additional testimonies) will be more than sufficient to reliably reconstruct all that had happened in the communal treasuries all over Serbia in the past years.
In almost all major cities the departing socialists have left behind them an economic scenery resembling a region under "nuclear ashes" out of which very few things will grow in the near future. The new authorities have inherited only debts - in Belgrade the debt amounts to some 400 millions dinars, in Nis to 44 million dinars, Uzice 6 million - while the new authorities in Kragujevac have determined that, apart from the empty safebox, this town utilizes only the truly unbelievable 4.68 percent of its capacities.
The first pages of communal "black books" which are being written, as shown by information on inherited losses and catastrophic economic situation, are very much the same. By its length and number of pages, the most interesting and abundant in figures is the book of sins of until recently Nis power-holders. Same as in other cities, in Nis also, an important part of financial documentation is missing, but it seems that what has been found so far will be more than enough to put many of them behind bars. At the same time, Nis is the first town in which some "embarrassing" witnesses have appeared, the SPS renegades, who now explain how everything looked on "the inside".
When, after taking over power in this town, president of the Nis government, Branislav Jovanovic, alluding to an enormous number of started but unfinished buildings, said that "Nis is not construction, but rather a miracle of plunder" and that "practically everything that was built in Nis was done in such a dubious manner that it did not bring much good to it", many have interpreted these statements more as an attempt on the part of the new authorities to prepare grounds for retreat in time for everything that would ensue in the following months. It soon turned out that Jovanovic was absolutely right and that such primitive and apparent rigging of elections in Nis was no accident. In the same primitive way stealing started long before the elections. Most frequently, it seems, with a conviction that power will never change hands.
One of the first discoveries (and strangely enough, undestroyed traces), indicated that the previous municipal government had paid one million dinars from the city budget for the SPS electoral campaign. This money was used to finance the printing of the infamous pre-election poster of the former leader of the Nis SPS, Mile Ilic, with a message below the picture of famous Mile's moustaches which read: "The Winning Man". One of the Nis SPS ex-frontmen and the former vice-president of the municipal government, Branko Todorovic, better known as "Bata Bane pekar" (buddy Bane, the baker), the man who was first to confess to the existence of and describe the mechanism for mishandling electoral wins in this town (he claimed that the SPS had a secret fund of some additional twenty thousand voting papers), also described how the money was used for manipulations long before the elections.
Rejected by his party, Bata Bane broke the silence and told of things which, in many respects, fall under the category of criminal acts. Among other things, he claimed that several millions of German marks were used for the SPS campaign which he turned-over exporting pigs. Both these examples should be remembered. The more so because it was the Socialist Party which so frequently accused other parties of accepting financial assistance outside any control, and thus illegally and dangerously using significant amounts of money for political purposes, with possible extremely negative consequences.
The example of Nis shows how for, the sake of preserving power, socialists would stoop at nothing, not even crime, and how they consider even the funds from the city budget the property of the party in power. In all likelihood, the Nis case could be only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the uncontrolled spending and misappropriation of funds for political purposes.
One of the undestroyed traces the departing team of Nis socialists left in their wake led to a private printing-house the "Pelican Print" which printed voting slips for recent elections. As it was subsequently discovered, the price of one slip size A5, according to a contract the former authorities concluded with this house, was 68 paras. The "Pelican" printed 200 thousand voting slips, but what has not been determined so far is - who made a scoop in this deal - as it is known that the real price of printing of one slip (with such a number of copies) is between two to three paras. Judging by this figure, the Nis elections were not only the most irregular ones, but probably also the most expensive in Serbia. To begin with, the new government of Nis demanded of the printing-house the return of the price difference. As the agreement on the return of money fell through, legal proceeding have been instituted against this private printing-house.
Just after the uncovering of this scandal, the new authorities stumbled upon a contract on the construction of bus stops (similar to those in Belgrade), which the former government signed with an unknown private firm. The value of the contract was 25 million dinars. As it was clear at first glance that this was an over-paid deal, i.e. wasteful behaviour and someone's attempt to pocket the money through fictitious accounts and costs, this contract was annulled. President of the new municipal government, Branislav Jovanovic, claims that after the annulment of the contract the money earmarked for the exorbitantly expensive bus stations will be reallocated, in the first place, for finishing the construction of the Children's Hospital in Nis.
Five weeks after taking over, the gravest concern of the new municipal government is how to cover an enormous municipal budget deficit and losses. Some of it could be compensated by the collection of accumulated debts. Last year only, for example, the city budget did not get its 80 million dinars for construction land fees which, at the same time, represents a half of the 1996 Nis budget. The new authorities frequently mention shady dealings with the construction of the new market place, after which the public enterprise "The Market" ended up 6 million dinars short.
A part of the missing money could be possibly secured by the sale of at least a half of cars which belonged to the city administration and public enterprises. About 40 percent of the Assembly motor pool has already been put away into garages until the holding of a public tender. The making of an inventory of the municipal property is continuing, as it turned out that two costly "Renaults" have been bought with municipal funds at the time the post-electoral crisis was in full swing and when the Nis socialists, as it seems, still believed that they would manage to falsify the electoral will of citizens with the assistance of obedient judicature. Things will be much easier with the surplus of luxury cars than with the excessive bureaucratic apparatus. The city administration has at least about 800 employees, out of which almost one third were employed in the last electoral year.
It seems that the greatest benefit for the exhausted city budget will come from "Mile's Palace", i.e. the Balkanological Institute for the Study of Local Self-Administration, the founder of which was once president of the Nis SPS, Mile Ilic. Last year he got his master's degree with a paper on the subject of local self-administration and immediately decided to open a Balkanological Institute to research this field. He found free offices on the third floor of the municipal building and allocated three million dinars for their redecoration.
Soon after that leather furniture came, crystal chandeliers, paintings, plastic flower arrangements and other sorts of kitsch, naturally paid with other people's money. According to claims of the leading men of the new Nis authorities, the decoration and furnishing of "Mile's Palace" cost something around DM 1,5 million. Part of the funds for the financing of the Balkanological Institute was taken from the communal budget. At first, it was envisaged that Nis would donate 350 thousand dinars to the Institute. After the elections, someone suddenly decided to increase this allocation from the budget to 600 thousand dinars. Naturally, nothing came of the Institute, while valuable suites of furniture will soon go to public auction.
The writing of the Nis "black book" will most probably take some time, and the president of the municipal government, Branislav Jovanovic, says that in only few days so many criminal business scandals have been uncovered here that it is no longer clear "whether the authorities of Nis worked in a maffia-style, or whether the mob was in power". The wasteful behaviour and foul dealings of the previous city authorities with the economy on a verge of collapse, is obviously easy to prove with numerous examples and arguments, although many compromising documents have been taken away or destroyed in time. The disclosing of the sins of the earlier socialist team is for the time being one of the most important tasks occupying the local "liberated" Nis media. It will, therefore, be truly hard for the newly elected SPS leadership to launch any initiative in the year of the new republican elections, primarily because of what Mile Ilic and his associates did in this town. Even more so if the new opposition authorities prove equally skillful in remodelling the behaviour of people around city treasury as the had been in following the dirty tracks of their predecessors.
Nenad.Lj.Stefanovic