Pandora Papers Reveal Second Serbian Minister’s Hidden Offshore

After the Serbian investigative media outlet KRIK published confirmation of claims that Serbia's Finance Minister, Sinisa Mali, owned a portfolio of property in Bulgaria bought through secretive offshore companies, it has reported that the "Pandora Papers" also shed light on the hidden business activities of another Serbian minister - Novica Toncev, minister for developing poor municipalities.

The huge leak of financial documents from offshore companies, dubbed the Pandora Papers, comprising 12 million files, constitute the biggest such leak in history.

KRIK said the papers show Toncev secretly founded an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands in 2010, which, like Mali, he did not report to the country's Anti-Corruption Agency, as he was obliged to by law.

Toncev opened a company called "Service for Efficient Energy" in the known tax haven, where companies can be established without their owner's being known.

Through this, he had opened an account in Switzerland, KRIK concluded from the documents, leaked from the Swiss agency SFM, which deals with the establishment of offshore companies.

After the Swiss agency founded Toncev's offshore company, it issued an invoice charging for its services, one of which was opening an account in Switzerland.

Toncev, vice-president of Serbia's co-ruling Socialist Party, SPS, first told KRIK reporters that he was not connected to any offshore company and that his signature was probably forged.

He has since admitted owing an offshore company but claimed that he did not report the company to the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption because it was not then operational. "When a company starts working, I report, and while it doesn't work, I don't report," he told journalists.<...