EDB employees taken in for accepting bribe

Belgrade, Dec 16, 2003 - Criminal police of the Belgrade Secretariat of Interior (SUP) has brought before the investigative judge four employees of the Belgrade electricity distribution company Elektrodistribucija Beograd (EDB) suspected of taking bribes, together with Vlada Novakovic (54) from Belgrade suspected of illegal trade and giving a bribe, SUP stated and the Tanjug news agency reported.

The persons taken in are senior officials in the EDB Radoslav Ljubovic (60), Dusan Mesarovic (43), Dragoljub Radulovic (59) and Milorad Stancic (42).

In the period between February and December 2002, during the construction of an electricity grid in the Belgrade neighbourhood of Batajnica, Vlado Novakovic impersonated an EDB representative, organised the drafting of the construction plan and collected project documentation, applications and approvals for the construction of the electricity grid. That way, Novakovic took 85,480 Deutche marks from the citizens.

Of that sum, 57, 990 Deutsche marks were used for the construction of the grid and other services. Novakovic kept 19, 490 Deutsche marks for himself and divided the rest among the EDB managers. He gave 3,000 Deutche marks to Mesarovic, 2,000 Deutsche marks to Ljubovic and Radulovic each, and 1,000 Deutsche marks to Stancic so that they would accelerate the construction of the grid and its coming into operation, read the statement by SUP.