Serbia Campaign Spending: SNS Reports 181m Dinars, Student List 236m

Preliminary campaign-finance reports for Serbia's 25 October parliamentary election, published by the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption, show the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) declaring slightly more than 181 million dinars in costs and the Student List declaring 236 million, Nova and Vreme reported on Saturday, 7 November.

What the SNS report shows

According to the reports, SNS listed about 49.2 million dinars for advertising, including 40.1 million paid to the agency Max Strategic for online and social-media promotion, 8.5 million paid to public broadcaster RTS and about 450,000 dinars to the weekly NIN. It also reported an RTS advance of about 158.5 million dinars for which invoices had not yet been submitted; the reports do not make clear whether that sum is part of the 181 million total. Other items include about 5.3 million dinars for certifying signatures, 5.6 million for renting Belgrade Arena for an early-October rally and 556,100 dinars, recorded as unpaid, for the Ranko Žeravica hall used for the closing rally.

Student List and other lists

The Student List, which won 140 of the 250 seats, reported 236 million dinars. The Socialist Party of Serbia also declared more than SNS, according to Vreme, which did not give the figure, while the Russian Party reported 188 million dinars for campaign materials alone.

Transparency Serbia: 'a false picture'

Nemanja Nenadić of Transparency Serbia told Nova that the SNS report gives a false picture of its spending. He said advertising on some national TV channels and billboard rentals had been left out or shown below their real value, pointing to figures cited by Nova that put the SNS list's share of all TV election advertising at 89%. He also criticised the Agency for not opening proceedings over obvious inconsistencies in such reports. The published reports carried no response from SNS to the criticism.

Preliminary, not final

By law, every list had to file a preliminary report at least seven days before the vote, by 18 October this year. Final financial reports, which cover the whole campaign and its funding sources, are submitted later and are the basis for any checks by the Agency. Until then, the figures are what the parties themselves have declared.