Prosecutor's office: Five more people arrested in railway project corruption case

BELGRADE - The Serbian Public Prosecutor's Office for Organised Crime said on Friday that, in an investigation of financial money flows concerning a project to modernise and reconstruct the Novi Sad-Subotica-Kelebija section of a Serbia-Hungary railway line, five more people had been arrested on suspicion of corruption-related criminal offences.

The arrestees are Nenad Ignjatovic, owner of Beska-based Deko tim LLC, Slobodanka Katanic, former investments manager at Serbian Railways Infrastructure JSC and project manager, Aleksandar Cvjetkovic, owner of the Menadzer youth cooperative, and Dragan Popovic and Zoran Mijajlovic, representatives of several companies, the prosecutor's office said in a statement.

It also said a strike group would start investigating money flows related to other aspects of the project.

Earlier, it announced that Tomislav Momirovic, who served as minister of construction, transport and infrastructure from October 2020 to October 2022, Anita Dimoski, former acting assistant minister at the Ministry of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure and acting head of the railways and intermodal transport sector and project mentor, and Nebojsa Surlan, who served as Serbian Railways Infrastructure director-general from May 2020 to March 2024, had been arrested on suspicion of office abuse, and that Starting LLC representative Nikola Trivic had been arrested on suspicion of abuse of office of responsible person, while Sinisa Jokic, who acted in the capacity as director of the City of Novi Sad Institute for Protection of Cultural Monuments in January-July 2023, and Veljko Novakovic, a public procurement clerk at the institute, had also been arrested for office abuse.

The Prosecutor's Office said former minister of construction, transport and infrastructure Goran Vesic, who was hospitalised on Thursday, was also a suspect in the case.