The Milosevic Indictment

These are excerpts from the indictment against former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic:

Based on evidence collected by the criminal police, there is grounded suspicion that Slobodan Milosevic, as the president of Serbia until May 17, 1997, and thereafter as the president of Yugoslavia until Oct. 5, 2000, committed crimes with the intention of securing benefits for himself and a certain number of persons, to secure to his SPS (Socialist Party of Serbia) property and other benefits with the aim of preserving that political party in power.

He did this by overstepping the limits of his official authorizations, by issuing illegal orders violating Yugoslav law and the constitutions of Serbia and Yugoslavia.

The implementation of these orders resulted in destroying the payments system of the country and causing monetary instability.

In 1994 and 1995, Milosevic organized a group of federal officials and other persons and agreed with them and thereafter issued orders to violate federal laws, that is not to implement Yugoslav laws, with the intention of executing the orders.

All the activities, for which orders had been issued or had been agreed, including the forgery of official identification documents, have the characteristics of criminal acts under federal law, for which prescribed sentence is more than five years in prison.

As the president of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic organized a meeting in 1994 with the newly appointed Federal Customs Director Mihalj Kertes and Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Nikola Sainovic and Jovan Zebic.

The meeting agreed with Milosevic’s proposal that a part of the customs income should be redirected to a separate bank account set up with Beogradska Bank.

The charged Mihalj Kertes and Nikola Sainovic have assisted Slobodan Milosevic in committing the above mentioned acts by using all available means in their separate authorities to fulfill the orders from the agreement they made with Slobodan Milosevic in 1994 and 1995.