Milivojevic files complaint against Vucic over 49 pardons
The Democratic Party leader says the justice minister submitted neither an opinion nor a proposal, and asks prosecutors to check whether the pardons cover the most high-profile cases.
The Democratic Party (DS) filed a criminal complaint on October 2 against Aleksandar Vucic over his act pardoning 49 people, which he issued as president of Serbia on September 27, 2026. The complaint was handed in at the registry of the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office, and party president Srdjan Milivojevic described its contents at a press conference.
According to Milivojevic, the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office will decide which competent prosecutor’s office to forward the complaint to. We reported earlier that prosecutors and judges are asking for the names of those pardoned and that the Higher Court has not received the pardon decision. Now a political party has entered the story, with a criminal complaint.
What does the DS accuse Vucic of?
The party says there are reasonable grounds to suspect that Vucic exceeded his official powers and issued the act in violation of the Law on Pardons. The offense named in the complaint is abuse of office under Article 359 of the Criminal Code, with the possibility that other offenses may also be established.
Milivojevic explained that Article 10 of the Law on Pardons requires the justice minister, after reviewing a request, to send the president the request together with all case files and the minister’s own opinion, while Article 11 provides that proceedings ex officio are initiated by the justice minister. According to the information available to the party, none of that was done.
“In this particular case, the justice minister did not submit an opinion if it was a matter of acting on a request, nor a proposal for a pardon if it was a matter of acting ex officio,” Milivojevic said.
Who knows the names of those pardoned?
The DS also claims the procedure was conducted without transparency, because the acts were not published on the president’s website, on the Ministry of Justice website or in the Official Gazette. Milivojevic said he does not currently know who all the pardoned persons are, apart from those whose names were made public. Twenty-three names are publicly known, 12 of them from the so-called Novi Sad group.
Which cases does Milivojevic mention?
The DS president said his suspicions relate, among other things, to proceedings concerning:
- the collapse of the canopy
- the General Staff affair
- Jovanjica
- five tons of marijuana found in the village of Konjuh
- the trial of Dijana Hrkalovic
- the Banjska case and Milan Radoicic
- the murder of Oliver Ivanovic
- Darko Saric and Veljko Belivuk
As one of his reasons he cited earlier statements by Veljko Belivuk before the Special Court for Organized Crime, including his claims about a link with the Serbian Progressive Party and Aleksandar Vucic, and his claim that he knows who Oliver Ivanovic’s killers are.
“I stress that there are clear indications that the most high-profile cases being tried before the Special Court for Organized Crime may be covered by these acts of pardon and abolition,” Milivojevic said.
In his words, those pardoned may include people whose proceedings could lead to establishing a possible connection between Vucic and the defendants. Milivojevic assessed that such conduct has “deeply shaken citizens’ trust in the legal order”.
“We do not know what Aleksandar Vucic’s role was in instigating the General Staff case, we do not know what his role was in the canopy case,” the DS president said, adding that this is why there is a suspicion that Vucic abused his office to protect himself from possible criminal prosecution.
What does the DS ask of prosecutors?
Milivojevic asked prosecutors to act on the complaint “in the shortest possible time” and to inform the public of the results. He also said what he is not asking for.
“I am not proposing that the prosecutor’s office order detention for Aleksandar Vucic, nor do I want to interfere in the prosecutor’s office’s work on how it will act in this case,” Milivojevic said.
Everything above consists of claims and suspicions of the Democratic Party, and prosecutors have yet to decide whether and how to act on the complaint. The material from the press conference contains no response from then-president Vucic to these allegations, and no information on whether the Ministry of Justice submitted an opinion or proposal that the party cannot see in publicly available acts.
