The State Audit Institution (DRI) announced on Thursday that it initiated misdemeanor procedures against 19 officials.

They include six current and five former ministers in the Serbian government.

They are all charged with violations of the Budget System Law.

The offence procedures were initiated against Minister of Trade and Services Slobodan Milosavljević, Minister for Kosovo and Metohija Goran Bogdanović, Minister of Education Žarko Obradović, Health Minister Tomica Milosavljević, Minister of Culture Nebojša Bradić, and Minister of Environment and Spatial Planning Oliver Dulić.

Slobodan Milosavljević was charged on the basis of the reasonable suspicion that he took upon himself obligations and allowed expenditures not envisaged by the Serbian budget law.

Bogdanović, Obradović and Tomica Milosavljević are suspected of allowing expenditures for catering services on the basis of the documentation according to which it could not be established that the spending was for the purposes of business, DRI said.

The health minister is accused of allowing expenditures for the implementation of a public health program without accounting documentation.

The culture minister will be held responsible on the basis of the reasonable suspicion that he committed payments for goods and services without accounting documentation, i.e. without a valid accounting document.

Five former ministers against whom charges are pressed are Saša Dragin, for offences committed while serving as minister of environment protection, former Culture Minister Vojislav Brajović, former Minister of Trade and Services Predrag Bubalo, former Education Minister Zoran Lončar, and former Minister for Kosovo and Metohija Slobodan Samardžić, the announcement says.