Sretenovic on audit of political parties' financial reports

BELGRADE - Serbia's State Audit Institution (DRI) will have drawn up a program for audit of financial reports of political parties in Serbia at the beginning of December, and first such audits will be performed next year, DRI Auditor-General Radoslav Sretenovic said Thursday.

Opening a regional conference of state audit institutions in Belgrade today, Sretenovic said that the financial reports of political parties, or political entities, represented in the parliament, would be audited first, as stipulated by the draft law on financing political activities.

After that, we can expect audit of the funding of political parties at the regional and local levels.

Sretenovic said that the DRI currently did not have enough competent people to audit the financial reports of political parties, and it had decided to entrust the job to experts of the Sector for Audit of the National Bank of Serbia.

Chairman of the Serbian parliament's Committee on Finance, State Budget and Control of Public Spending Veroljub Arsic said that it had turned out that many parties had behaved irresponsibly when it came to using financial resources and that they had been taking loans from commercial banks.

"I believe that the introduction of the audit of financial reports could force political parties to use money responsibly, even in non-election time," said Arsic.

President of the State Audit Institution of Montenegro Milan Dabovic spoke about the experience of that institution after auditing financial reports of political parties and their balance sheets for several years.

The State Audit Institution of Montenegro is able to carry out a financial audit of any party at the central and local levels, regardless of the...