Vladan Zagrađanin

Vladan Zagrađanin (Serbian Cyrillic: Владан Заграђанин; born 30 May 1968) is a politician in Serbia. He has served in the National Assembly of Serbia since 2016 as a member of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS).

Private life and career

Zagrađanin is a graduate of the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law.[1] His party biography indicates that he has served as president of the Youth Council of Belgrade and secretary-general of the Belgrade Ecological Center, was executive director of the public enterprise Srbijašume from 1998 to 2000, and was on the steering committee on the State Lottery of Serbia from 2004 to 2006.[2] He lives in the Belgrade municipality of New Belgrade.[3]

He is kum to Socialist Party leader Ivica Dačić.[4]

Political career

Zagrađanin has been a member of the Socialist Party of Serbia since its formation in 1990 and is a member of its presidency and main board.[5] From 2003 to 2006, he was the party's business director.[6]

He received the seventy-ninth position on the Socialist Party's electoral list in the 2003 Serbian parliamentary election.[7] The party won twenty-two seats, and he was not selected for its assembly delegation. (Between 2000 and 2011, Serbian parliamentary mandates were awarded to sponsoring parties or coalitions rather than to individual candidates, and it was common practice for mandates to be awarded out of numerical order. Zagrađanin's relatively low position on the list – which was, in any event, mostly arranged in alphabetical order – would not have prevented him from being awarded a mandate, although he was ultimately not selected by the party).[8]

Zagrađanin was arrested in January 2006 for allegedly attempting to bribe Dejan Simić, a deputy director of the National Bank of Serbia, with 100,000 Euros to reinstate the operating permit for the Kreditno-Eksportna Banka.[9] This case attracted international attention,[10][11][12] and was dubbed the "suitcase affair" in the Serbian media as the money had been found in a suitcase. Both Simić and Zagrađanin were acquitted by the Higher Court of Belgrade in May 2010,[13] and the acquittal was upheld by the Belgrade Court of Appeal in 2011.[14] During the trial, Dačić testified that he believed Simić and Zagrađanin had been unfairly targeted.[15]

Serbia's electoral system was reformed in 2011, such that parliamentary mandates were awarded in numerical order to candidates on successful lists. Zagrađanin received the sixty-fourth position on the Socialist Party's electoral list for the 2014 parliamentary election.[16] The list won forty-four seats, and he was not elected. He was promoted to the twentieth position in the 2016 parliamentary election and was on this occasion elected to the assembly when the list won twenty-nine seats.[17]

He is currently a member of the assembly's defence and internal affairs committee, a deputy member of the security services control committee, and a member of the parliamentary friendship groups with Austria, Belarus, Belgium, China, Germany, Japan, Kazakhstan, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Russia, Turkey, and the United States of America.[18] There were some reports in 2017 that he could be appointed to a government post, though ultimately this did not occur.[19]

References
  1. VLADAN ZAGRAĐANIN, Otvoreni Parlament, accessed 20 July 2018.
  2. Vladan Zagrađanin, Socialist Party of Serbia, accessed 20 July 2018.
  3. VLADAN ZAGRADjANIN, National Assembly of Serbia, accessed 20 July 2018.
  4. "Serbia: Friendships among politicians often cross ideological divides," British Broadcasting Corporation Monitoring European, 7 May 2010 (Source: Vecernje novosti, Belgrade, in Serbian 1 May 10).
  5. VLADAN ZAGRAĐANIN, Otvoreni Parlament, accessed 20 July 2018.
  6. Vladan Zagrađanin, Socialist Party of Serbia, accessed 20 July 2018.
  7. Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 28. децембра 2003. године, СОЦИЈАЛИСТИЧКА ПАРТИЈА СРБИЈЕ - СЛОБОДАН МИЛОШЕВИЋ, Republika Srbija - Republička izborna komisija, accessed 17 February 2017.
  8. Serbia's Law on the Election of Representatives (2000) stipulated that parliamentary mandates would be awarded to electoral lists (Article 80) that crossed the electoral threshold (Article 81), that mandates would be given to candidates appearing on the relevant lists (Article 83), and that the submitters of the lists were responsible for selecting their parliamentary delegations within ten days of the final results being published (Article 84). See Law on the Election of Representatives, Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia, No. 35/2000, made available via LegislationOnline, accessed 28 February 2017).
  9. "Agency profiles Serbian Central Bank governor," British Broadcasting Corporation Monitoring European, 11 October 2007 (Source: Beta Week, Belgrade, in English 11 Oct 07).
  10. "Judge orders a month's detention for Central Bank deputy governor, Socialist official," Associated Press Newswires, 14 January 2006.
  11. Misha Savic, "Serbian police arrest Central Bank's deputy chief," Canadian Press, 12 January 2006.
  12. "Serbian Central Bank's Deputy Governor Fired After Arrest," Dow Jones International News, 16 January 2008.
  13. "Suitcase Affair defendants acquitted", B92, 21 May 2010, accessed 20 July 2018.
  14. "Apelacioni sud potvrdio presude za aferu 'Kofer', Politika, 8 February 2011, accessed 20 July 2018.
  15. Aleksandar Lazić, "Ivica Dačić – talentovani političar koji se pretvorio u policajca", Nova srpska politička misao, 11 July 2011, accessed 20 July 2018.
  16. Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 16. и 23. марта 2014. године, ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (ИВИЦА ДАЧИЋ - "Социјалистичка партија Србије (СПС), Партија уједињених пензионера Србије (ПУПС), Јединствена Србија (ЈС)"), Republika Srbija - Republička izborna komisija, accessed 27 February 2017.
  17. Избори за народне посланике 2016. године » Изборне листе (ИВИЦА ДАЧИЋ – „Социјалистичка партија Србије (СПС), Јединствена Србија (ЈС) – Драган Марковић Палма“), Republika Srbija - Republička izborna komisija, accessed 27 February 2017.
  18. VLADAN ZAGRADjANIN, National Assembly of Serbia, accessed 20 July 2018.
  19. "SPS sastavio svoj spisak imena", Danas, 21 June 2017, accessed 20 July 2018.
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