In July 2020 Serbian government launched an anti-money laundering/terrorism financing investigation against 47 prominent watchdog CSOs, media outlets and activists without a clear risk criteria or legal basis. Targeted groups had their bank accounts restricted and were under pressure for over a year, which included a pro-governmental smear campaign in the media using leaked private information from the investigation.
With reasoning vaguely based on the Prevention of Money Laundering Law, the Ministry of Finance and the Administration launched an inspection and mass extraordinary information collection from commercial banks. The law states that such inspection should be performed only for entities for which there are grounds for suspicion of their involvement in the financing of terrorism or money laundering. However, the investigation targeted numerous organisations and individuals dealing with investigative journalism, protection of human rights, transparency, development of democracy, rule of law and philanthropy. The overall conclusion was that this investigation constituted a political abuse of institutions, a dangerous attempt to further collapse the rule of law in Serbia, and put pressure on the media and CSOs.
What action did Serbian CSOs take?
With ECNL assistance, Serbian CSOs responded by working together with peer organisations and developing an increased understanding of the AML/CFT processes and FATF standards. They organised meetings, online events to explain the issues and produced briefers that were disseminated to relevant international stakeholders. One approach that greatly contributed to the success of the push-back was the facilitation of international outreach to distribute the briefer. Further, they issued a a call to different international bodies asking them to take action, including the FATF, MONEYVAL and the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism. Additionally, educational materials on FATF requirements, measures, and procedures were translated into Serbian to be shared with the CSO sector and government officials.
The combination of these actions led Serbian authorities to back-track on the investigation, claiming it was merely a part of the regular assessment activities. without implicating any type of responsibility of those on the list as investigated for AML/CFT purposes.
Read ECNL's impact story for more details and check out the video below for a testimonial from our Serbian partners:
