Resident EU Prosecutor Ms. Marina Beun presenting the CSCWB Project Public Prosecutors’ Offices in Serbia

In the period from June to October 2022 the project Countering Serious Crime in the Western Balkans, together with the Serbian Liaison officer at Eurojust Ms. Gordana Janićijević, held awareness raising meetings in Serbia. The work of Eurojust and the CSCWB project was presented in meetings in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Kragujevac and Niš, respectively. Prosecutors from the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime, Basic, Higher and Appellate Prosecutor’s Office and representatives of four Anti-corruption departments attended these meetings.

In these meetings, the organization and results of Eurojust were presented, followed by an explanation how to improve the international cooperation by having coordination meetings or the forming a Joint Investigation Team (JIT).

There was a presentation of the CSCWB project in which an explanation was given about the project and the operational support the project can offer in ongoing serious crime cases. To make it more concrete examples of support and advice, which was provided by the project were given. One of these advice concerns a checklist for the so called stand-alone money-laundering cases. In this checklist there are instructions how to build the suspicion when it’s not clear what the legal background of the money is, what questions have to be asked at the interrogation and what kind of evidence is needed to get a conviction for money laundering. This checklist is based on the Dutch checklist for stand alone money-laundering cases.

These meetings were well attended, and participants were very interested in practical information on international cooperation.