Pištaljka: Snežana Đurić – Former Serbian Anti-Corruption Chief on Trial for Corruption, Is a Fugitive from Justice but Works for the UN

Serbia once again demonstrates its disregard for the rule of law concerning corruption

Pištaljka (The Whistle) is a whistleblowing platform ins Serbia

Cross-posted from Pištaljka

Read the Serbian version HERE

Zorana Marković

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna (UNODC) has a wanted person as its employee. Zorana Marković, former director of the Serbian Anti-Corruption Agency, who was charged with corruption in 2019 and who is a fugitive from justice since 2022, works at the corruption department of the UNODC, Pištaljka uncovers.

Despite the fact that the United Nations knows that Zorana Marković is on the run due to accusations of corruption, this institution does not end its engagement with her, and regardless of the fact that Serbian courts have information about her whereabouts, no one acts on the warrant for almost two years.

While for the courts in Serbia, the former director of the Anti-Corruption Agency is a fugitive from justice, in the Vienna office of the UN she works unhindered as an expert in crime prevention and criminal justice in the department for corruption and economic crime. “The United Nations is aware of the legal proceedings in Serbia against the UNODC staff member in Austria. The United Nations does not comment on legal proceedings involving staff members and resolves this issue in accordance with the legal framework applicable to the UN and staff members”, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime responded to Pištaljka.

Officials and representatives of the United Nations enjoy immunity, but the International Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations does not provide that officials of this organization can hide from prosecution for corruption crimes unrelated to their engagement with the United Nations.

Since 2019, criminal proceedings have been conducted against Zorana Marković in Serbia due to the suspicion that she abused her official position when she entered a currency clause into the contract for the purchase of a building for the needs of the Anti-Corruption Agency on her own and without the necessary authorizations, thereby enabling a private company illegal property benefit of about 50 million dinars.

The building was bought at the beginning of 2012 without a tender for about 4.5 million euros from a company that the media linked to the Surčin criminal clan. Namely, as Blic wrote, the contract was concluded with the company “Srbijaprojekt”, whose owner was Branka Narančić, the wife of Milan Narančić Limun, who was linked to the former Surčin clan in the white book on organized crime.

Branka Narančić became a co-owner of the company in 2007, when in a consortium with Ilija Đorđević and Željko Ličin, she bought this company from the state for 1.6 million euros during the privatization process.

This case, however, was not the only controversial one during Zorana Marković’s directorial career in the Anti-Corruption Agency. She refused to initiate proceedings when Pishtaljka published information about the previously hidden assets of former Defense Minister Dragan Sutanovac in Vračar. The procedure was initiated only after Pištaljka sent an official report with evidence. The scandal ended with an acquittal because the former minister claimed during the proceedings that the land in the center of Belgrade, which was registered as grazing pasture in the cadastre, was a gift.

Although, after all these affairs, Marković was relieved of her duties in 2012 because, as Pištaljka revealed, she protected officials, minimized the work of the Agency, requested two official apartments from the Government – in 2013, she got a job at the United Nations office in Cairo, and just as a regional advisor for the fight against corruption for the Middle East and North Africa area. She moved to the Office in Vienna in 2021, although in 2015 she was even arrested as part of the large police operation in which around 80 former officials suspected of corruption were arrested, according to the indictment on which she is still being tried.

The United Nations did not answer the question of whether they checked the biography of Zorana Marković when she was hired and for what reasons they hired her, that is, what qualified the former director for a job at the UN in the corruption department.

In her biography on the business social network LinkedIn, it is stated that before working at the Anti-Corruption Agency, she worked as an assistant legal adviser at the US Department of Justice, that she was a senior adviser at the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights and a trainer of the OSCE mission in Serbia. Also, Marković was the recipient of an American Fulbright scholarship in the period from 2003-2004, and before that she worked as a civil servant – first at the city government in Belgrade, and later, from 1991 to 2001, at the Ministry of Finance.

Zorana Marković never appeared at the main trial, and the High Court in Belgrade twice rejected proposals to try her in absentia. This was proposed by the prosecution, as well as Zorana Marković’s lawyers.

Under the explanation that Marković “is not on the run, nor is she unavailable to the state authorities, given that the court knows where the defendant is … and that she is currently there due to work engagement”, as well as that the gravity of the criminal offense for which she is accused “does not cause public anxiety, and in this particular case does not threaten the statute of limitations of the criminal prosecution” the court rejected the proposal of the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in June 2022.

A few days after this decision, the case received a new case number and new judges because the criminal proceedings against Marković were separated from the other defendants.

When the prosecution in this new case asked for detention and the issuance of a warrant, Zorana Marković’s lawyers requested that she be tried in absentia. The court decided to order detention and issue a warrant.

Zorana Marković’s name is not on Interpol’s public list of wanted persons, and the High Court stated that they are not competent to issue an international warrant.

Neither the Ministry of the Interior nor the Ministry of Justice, nor Interpol, provided the answer to whether the state requested international assistance from Interpol in the search for the United Nations official.

Despite the fact that there is no verdict, in the domestic registers the case is currently being kept as “settled” because, as explained to us by the High Court, according to the court rules of procedure, it is prescribed that the sign of the final decision in criminal proceedings is placed even when a warrant has been issued against the defendant, so after 90 days have passed, it is not found.

“The case has not been resolved, it is only handled formally,” Brankica Majkić, Zorana Marković’s attorney, told Pištaljka and refused to answer further questions because she does not have the consent of her client.

Zorana Marković did not answer Pištaljka’s questions.

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