Analysis of arrears of public prosecutors offices in Serbia

This report represents the output of the analysis of arrears of Public Prosecutor's Offices in the Republic of Serbia. The analysis was conducted on a sample of five PPOs during November and December 2016. It found substantial differences in the process of commitment assumption regarding investigation expenditure. Apart from the lack of clarity and guidance in expenditure verification and improper financial management IT infrastructure in place, this reflect heavily on the observed levels and the differences in levels of arrears across the PPOs. Another important finding of the analysis is that the investigation related expenditure levels per case vary significantly across PPOs. There is a large discrepancy in cost per case both across the whole sample and across the PPOs from the same category (i.e. instance). Some offices pay consistently two or even three times more per case than their counterparts from the same category. These differences cannot be explained by the increase in case load and the level of complexity of cases managed by PPOs.