Double salaries and extinguishing contracts: Where Kosovo budget went for Serb municipalities

The V.J., Serbian citizen of the Leposavich municipality of Kosovo has accepted two salaries as a school worker in this municipality for at least ten years, until 2018.

In ten Kosovo municipalities, inhabited by Serbs, including Leposaviqi, the educational system works according to Serbia's programme and accepts funds directly from Serbia's budget.

Speaking of Radio Free Europe, V.J. The complete identity of which is known for editing shows that in 2017 he received an indefinite contract from the municipality, according to Kosovo laws, even though he had an active contract with the Serbian system.

“Even before that contract, we have received money [regard from Kosovo budget]... Then we took money without any contract. All workers [in the Serbian system] have received money without contract and then received contracts [from Kosovo]”, the V.J. says.

In February 2018, he adds, the new local power in Lepsoaviq, then headed by Zoran Todic of the Serbian List, has banned their income from Kosovo's budget, without any reasoning, according to him.

In Serbian education institutions in Kosovo, which function from post-war 1999, workers, in addition to the basic salary, receive an additional amount from the Serbian state, meaning that their income is brought in from 900 to 1,300 euros a month.

The teaching salary in the Kosovo system, meanwhile, is between 580 and over 600 euros.
V.J. He says he has never made a decision to cut the contract with the Kosovo system.

The salary [from the Kosovo budget] was later distributed to some people of the [Serbian List] party, who never worked but received their salaries”, says V.J., without specifying who is paid at that salary.

Radio Free Europe has not been able to independently verify these claims.
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But on this matter, V.J. Says he filed charges at the Mitrovica Foundation Court at the end of 2020.

According to documents he provided REL, through this indictment, he has sought retroactive pay restitution, which totals about 11,000 euros by the time of the indictment.

According to the V.J. defence attorney, his indictment has not yet been reviewed at the Mitrovica Court, the branch in Leposaviq, apparently due to lack of staff.

Serbian workers of Kosovo institutions in the north, including the courts, have resigned in November 2022 due to a Kosovo Government decision to reregister cars with Kosovo Serb license plates.

Free Europe Radio has made efforts to contact the former head of Leposaviqi, Zoran Todiq, about cutting payments for education workers, but, until publishing this article, he has not responded.

Todic, who has also resigned in 2022, is also chairman of Leposavic's Interim Authority, which works under the Serbian system.

Until his resignation, he has received two salaries, one from Kosovo's budget and one from Serbia.

The exact number of educational workers in Leposavic is not public.

Even in annual publication of education statistics, the Kosovo Ministry of Education says it does not have statistical data on the education of the Serb community in Kosovo.

However, Kosovo, each year, shares the budget for Kosovo's 38 municipalities, including salaries and additions to education and health.

Contacted by the REL, the Kosovo government has not answered the question of whether it knows or monitored how this budget is spent.

Two Systems in Two Years

Neither the Leposaviqi municipality, now led by Albanian Mayor Lulzim Hetemi, has been able to provide answers to what way this budget is spent.

On a visit REL made to this municipality on February 15th, he found that in a small office in the municipality's minority facility, dozens of municipal documents were listed, divided into two windows.

One of the workshops carried municipality documents working with Kosovo laws, and the other documents from parallel municipalities controlled by Serbia.

Both institutions worked from the same object before 2022

Hetemi said there is no information about how the municipality's preliminary budget could be spent.

They [money] don't know where they went, because we haven't been competent to look at the documents. I immediately made a call to come [police] of economic crimes. They've been investigating for two and a half months... they've been reviewing the documentation of where and where they went before”, Hetem told Radio Free Europe.

Kosovo police confirmed for The REL has begun investigating “about abuses in the Leposaviqi municipality” and that it's in the witness collection phase.

Some files were seized”, police said.

The municipality confirmed that, currently, there are about ten people employed in the education system in the municipality, from the Albanian community, paid from its budget.

Hetemi said efforts are under way for Serbian-language school staff to integrate into Kosovo municipal institutions

If they don't enter our community system, we will use that money [for pay and hire] in different ways. For example, through the assembly, we will use” elsewhere, he said.
Situations in Other municipalities
The majority of Serb majority municipalities in Kosovo did not answer Radio Europe's free questions about how the budget is spent for salaries and additions to the education system and whether workers in this system have double salaries.

One of the only municipalities that responded, the Novoberda municipality, confirmed that 219 education workers -- 140 working in Serbian-language schools and 79 in Albanian schools are employed in this municipality.

According to her, all these workers receive salaries from Kosovo's budget.

The municipality said there is no information about whether workers in Serbian-planned schools also receive salaries from Serbia's budget.

But, Radio Free Europe sources have shown that in another Serb majority municipality, south of the Iber River, people who have received teaching contracts actually exercise other positions within the municipality.

In the Gracanica municipality, although schools work in the Serbian system, competitions for educational workers have recently been opened in the Kosovo system.

One of the last competitions was in October last year, for three elementary schools working according to the Serbian system and two professors in a high school and an electrotechnic school, which also function according to the Serbian system.

Similarly, in May 2023, this municipality declared competition for 14 jobs in elementary schools and 11 high school professors.

Free Europe Radio has attempted to contact the directors of these schools, but only the director of the Electronic School, Milan Dimitrijevic, has answered the phone.

Asked whether in his school there are teachers who receive the salary from the Kosovo Government budget, he said he cannot respond.

I cannot give you any information, for everything you should contact the Directorate of Education in Mitrovica”, Dimitrijevic said, referring to a parallel institution that leads the education of the Serb community in Kosovo.

Radio Free Europe has contacted this institution and the Ministry of Education in Serbia's Government, which is responsible for the educational system in Serb communities in Kosovo, but has not received answers.

Similar Health Sites

Kosovo shares the budget for workers in the Serbian majority municipalities, though they work according to the Serbian system.

Like the V.J. case, REL has found another case in which a health worker in northern Mitrovica has been suspended unexpectedly in 2015. By then, she had received double pay from both Kosovo and Serbia.

Serb majority municipalities south of the Iber River often announce competitions for doctors or other medical personnel, who are later employed at any health institution working in the Serbian system.

Confirmed that for REL-in-law Branimir Stojanovic, former head of Gracanica and former Serbian List official . . He is now one of the founders of the new party of Serbs in Kosovo -- the Serbian People's Movement.

You have doctors who, for example, work at Gracanica Hospital. There may have been some manipulation with the contracts before, but what we've done is we've announced competitions and so we've hired people”, Stojanovic said, and added he doesn't believe there are double payments for these workers.

Stojanovic believes that educational and health institutions in Kosovo should remain linked to the Serbian system, because they are key to the survival of Serbs, according to him.

He said the problem of double wage payments should be regulated through the Association of Major Serb municipalities in Kosovo, which was agreed on under the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue in 2013.

This association, which has not been established yet, is designed to have jurisdiction in the field of health and education, but also its budget, in which tools would be poured out by the Government of Kosovo and Serbia.

The Serbian state annually allocates millions of euros in funds to Kosovo, although there is little transparency about how those funds are spent.
In 2024 alone, close to 140m euros have been allocated.

Salaries in the field of education and health pass through the Office for Kosovo in Serbia's Government, which has not answered REL questions on this subject.

According to a drafttitut drafted by the West for forming the Association of Serb majority municipalities in Kosovo, Serbian health and education institutions are designed to register as private institutions.