19 Jun 2017

The Dawn of Dawn Raids or the Twilight of Due Process in Serbia?

In the last 10 days of May 2017, the Commission for Protection of Competition of the Republic of Serbia (hereinafter: the Commission) has decided to roll up its sleeves and put a number of companies suspected of committing competition violations on its conveyor belt.  Unusually high number of unannounced inspections – conducted at the premises of B2M d.o.o., Grafo Trade d.o.o., Trgodunav d.o.o., Master Clean Express d.o.o., AD HI Panonija and Frikom d.o.o. – begs a question, why now?  By way of comparison, the Commission has used its powers to carry out dawn raids on business premises only six times during the past two years, so why did the Commission decide to bring on its A-game now?

Coincidentally, on June 1st, 2017, (only one day after the initiation of the Commission’s last investigation in series) the new General Administrative Procedure Act came into force.  Serendipity or a forethought of the Serbian watchdog?  The story unfolds…

The entire article will be available to subscribers of Practical Law in July 2017.