Serbian whistleblower on the other side of justice

In a story that illustrates the risks and unpredictability of being a whistleblower, a government employee in Serbia was imprisoned with the complicity of the very same official whose alleged corruption she reported two years earlier.

Zorica Dragutinović, who worked in the local property office in the town of Veliko Gradište, was held for three months after she herself was fingered for wrongdoing by the same official she had exposed. She reported in 2012 that the high-ranking local official was illegally changing property boundaries, improperly giving land to people, and manipulating the price of agricultural land. She also accused the mayor and parliamentary speaker with corruption.

Even though she theoretically was being protected as a whistleblower by Serbia’s Anti-Corruption Agency, Dragutinović was arrested last December 11. This was two weeks after Serbia’s Parliament adopted a new whistleblower protection law. Dragutinović herself was charged with issuing an illegal building permit, an accusation that has been questioned. She was released on March 20.

Read the whole story on the investigative news and whistleblower website Pistaljka (“The Whistle”) here .