Emails to US Democracy Group raise questions about Serbian lobbying
Close Vucic associates a vice president of PKS
Cadez, who previously worked as a journalist and as a spokesman for the German embassy in Belgrade, said Yorktown was where he could go in connection with his work for the PKS.
“If it’s part of our contract business, they can contact whoever they want,” Cadez told BIRN.
Freedom House, he said, “deals with ranking certain segments that influence certain decisions and I don’t see what the problem is,” he said, noting though that he didn’t know if Yorktown had actually contacted Freedom House. “Serbian businessmen pay economically to lobby for Serbia, and economically and politically are not always separated.”
Indeed, this crossing is visible in the upper ranks of the PKS; among the seven vice-presidents is Nikola Petrovic, a close associate of Vucic.
The PKS told BIRN it saw nothing wrong with lobbying Freedom House since Yorktown’s filing included holding meetings with “influential think tanks who contribute significantly to the formation of public opinion. and can influence the business decisions of American companies”.
But Krstic said efforts to contact Freedom House raised questions about whether the Serbian government had encouraged the PKS to pressure the watchdog to avoid the use of state money for this purpose. .
“Such a scenario, given the closeness of the House leadership to the authorities, cannot be ruled out,” he said.
Cadez denied that the government encouraged the PKS to pressure Freedom House. Prime Minister Brnabic’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Serbian government lobbying in the United States
Like many other states, Serbia is lobbying the United States to promote its interests on a range of issues, particularly its former province of Kosovo which declared independence in 2008.
In March 2019, the progressive-led government signed an agreement with US firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP to represent Belgrade in a dispute with Kosovo on commercial rates, according to a contract filed with the Foreign Agents Registration Act, FARA, Registration Unit, which is part of the United States Department of Justice. It is unclear how much the company was paid. The contract was terminated in September of the same year.
Before the progressives came to power, previous governments had entered into contracts with a number of American lobbying firms to promote business interests, investment, trade and international relations, including, for example, a 2009 contract worth $85,000 a month with Chicago-based Advanced Practical Solutions LLC and a 2011 contract with Washington-based Roberti White LLC that was paid $900,000 over six months.