Serbia puzzled

Ex-politician allegedly stole 43,000 medals

(Bild: MLjubicic)

A spectacular theft from a government building in Belgrade has come to light in Serbia. According to media reports on Saturday, 43,000 ex-Yugoslav and Serbian medals worth around 426,000 euros were stolen there 14 years ago. Eight people have been arrested and two more are being sought. The main suspect is the former Secretary of State for Justice Slobodan Homen, a former employee of the pro-Western former President Boris Tadić.

Homen, a lawyer, is known in Serbia as a collector of medals. At the time of the theft in 2010, he was state secretary; two years later, the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) of President Aleksandar Vućić came to power. Homen then sat in parliament for former President Tadić's Social Democratic Party until 2014.

Ex-secretary of state speaks of "movie script"
According to media reports, Homen is being sought. He himself told the daily newspaper "Nin" (online edition) that he had learned of the allegations from the newspaper. "Just as I found out that I was on the run," the former state secretary told "the authors of this movie script".

He denied the accusations and described it as "impossible" to remove such a large number of medals from a government building. At the same time, he wondered why the judiciary and police only took up the matter after 15 years. In all this time, he himself had never been questioned, said Homen, who expressed the suspicion of a political diversionary maneuver.

It is unclear why the case became public now
It is unclear why the case has only now become public. The police are investigating the background to the crime. According to the investigators, sealed boxes containing the medals were stolen from the building at the time. The boxes were returned a few days later, with the damaged seal indicating that they had been opened. It is unclear whether the contents of the boxes were checked at the time. Some of the medals dated back to the Second World War.