

Serbian Finance Minister Sinisa Mali. Photo: Facebook/Sinisa Mali’s official page



Serbian Finance Minister Sinisa Mali, a close ally of President Aleksandar Vucic, plagiarised his PhD thesis, the Professional Ethics Committee of the University of Belgrade ruled on Thursday.

The Committee, in a press release, said it had “unanimously established” that Mali, in his doctoral dissertation, “literally took texts or entire passages from texts of other authors, without mentioning the names of those authors.”

It said former Belgrade mayor Mali, who defended his thesis at the Faculty of Organisational Sciences in 2013, had violated Article 22 of the Code of Professional Ethics.

The Committee said it would submit its ruling to the University Senate in compliance with regulations on revoking a degree. The Senate will rule on how to proceed.

The decision appeared to mark the climax of a five-year row over Mali’s dissertation, triggered by Rasa Karapandza, a professor at EBS University in Germany, who published a text in which he explained how Mali had plagiarised the work of others and lifted text from Serbia’s Privatisation Agency and Wikipedia.

Mali, who also served as a senior adviser to Vucic and as director of the public tender centre at the Serbian Privatisation Agency, dismissed the original claims as a smear campaign and on Thursday suggested the entire row was politically motivated.

“I know how much I know. I know I didn’t do it, and what this topic means for political reasons, I can’t even comment on it,” he told the Tanjug news agency in response to the Committee ruling.

“In any case, in the next few days I will also address this topic, and now, to be honest, I am interested in the Serbian budget”.

Mali has also faced allegations of concealing his ownership of apartments on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast and of involvement in the controversial demolition of a riverside area of Belgrade known as Savamala, as BIRN previously reported. He has denied all wrongdoing.