Nemanja Stajić, the former head of the Secretariat for Legalization of Buildings in Belgrade, was arrested on suspicion of approving the legalization of a number of illegally built buildings in exchange for money. KRIK has been writing about Stajić and his brother for more than three years
Nemanja Stajic, once the first man of the Secretariat for Legalization of Buildings in Belgrade, was arrested on Thursday, February 20, on suspicion of approving the legalization of a number of illegally built buildings, which, it is suspected, earned him and his family more than 6,5 million euros.
The investigation against Stajić was launched in 2022, six months after the Crime and Corruption Research Network published the testimonies of several construction investors who blamed Stajić and his secretariat for corruption and illegal construction, but the arrest happened only after the announcement by the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, that a fierce fight against corruption would begin, adds Krik.
"We started investigating Nemanja Stajic and his brother back in 2021, when we started investigating illegal construction in Belgrade," Milica Vojinović, Krik journalist, told Vreme. "It turned out that Stajić's own brother has an offshore company, through which they have been building in Belgrade for years."
How Stajić made a business
At that time, several city investors spoke for Krik and described the process of illegal construction. It turned out, adds Vojinović, that this is not some indicative matter, but that in Belgrade, illegal construction is deliberately done because it is much cheaper, and the investors then do not even have to comply with the entire set of regulations.
"The state even encouraged illegal construction by the institutions, headed by Stajić's Secretariat, leading those investors to build illegally rather than legally." If they wanted to get a permit, they had to wait for it for months, and those who would just start building without papers did much better," says journalist Krika. "We had that one statement, which describes the situation well, and it read - by the time I get all the permits, someone has already erected several devices of the building."
Institutions deliberately delayed and led investors to go in a different direction, adds the journalist, who says that at the time a figure of 100.000 euros was mentioned as a bribe in order to illegally erect a building. The bribe went to the Stajić brothers, who would then falsify the documents about the construction of the building. Because, until 2015, it was possible to build a building, and it was only subsequently legalized, but for buildings where construction started later - this regulation is not applicable.
Thus, KRIK reports, the Stajićs falsified building documentation for compensation, according to which they marked each building as having been built by 2015, so that it could be legalized later, even though it did not have the necessary papers before that.
Who all was arrested?
The chief prosecutor of the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade, Nenad Stefanović, said that eight people were arrested, including Stajić's deputy at the time, and now the current head of the legalization department in Vračar Municipality, Jovan Kovačević, as well as Stajić's own brother.
Stefanović said that one part of the investigation was the result of crossing the data obtained from the financial investigation of the suspect Stajić and his relatives, with the data published by the media about illegal legalizations.
"The aforementioned financial investigation was conducted as part of the investigation that was initiated against Nemanja S. in October 2022 and which, due to the complexity and scope of the checks, is still ongoing. It was established that the aforementioned persons could not acquire or build the disputed legalized objects with legal income."
He also explained that by looking into the disputed legalizations, the prosecution established that members of the immediate and distant relatives of the former city secretary, after the adoption of the decision on legalization, became the owners of the buildings that Stajić's secretariat legalized.
"Furthermore, they sold apartments and garages legalized in this way and converted property from criminal activities and obtained illegal property benefits that exceed 6,5 million euros," said Stefanović.
According to the prosecutor, from July 2019 to the end of 2022, Stajić's brother concluded contracts for the purchase and sale of 90 illegally legalized apartments and 16 garage spaces in different locations in the city, from which he gained more than five million euros. According to the prosecutor, among the suspects is IK, who acquired more than 490.000 euros by buying and selling illegally legalized buildings, Crik reports.
The second part of the investigation, as told by the prosecutor, related to the verification of the transfer of the right of use over plots owned by the Republic of Serbia.
Stefanović also showed satellite images of plots in Mirijevo and Mali Mokro Lug, which show that there were no buildings in 2015, 2016 and 2017. Although they started to be built only in 2018, as he said, requests for legalization were arriving as if they were built in 2015.
Those arrested are charged with abuse of official position, aiding and abetting, as well as money laundering, prosecutor Stefanović said.
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