“Involving the Security Intelligence Agency (BIA) in monitoring the distribution of holiday vouchers to pensioners is part of the summer repertoire – or rather, a festival of parody and cheap populism by the country’s leading man, who wants to dazzle the oldest demographic with the message that they are in ‘safe hands’. All that is missing in the next phase is for the President to deploy the Special Anti-Terrorist Unit (SAJ) to secure the distribution of Sava-type bread, and then the legal circus would be complete,” lawyer Ivan Ninić told Danas daily.
Announcing a package of measures, the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, stated that 30,000 holiday vouchers worth 10,000 dinars would be distributed to pensioners with pensions up to 80,000 dinars, and that their distribution would be monitored by “the agency” – namely, the Security Intelligence Agency (BIA).
He pointed out that there had previously been issues with the distribution of these vouchers, and to avoid that, the agency had been brought in this time. “We did our best, we engaged the BIA and the police, it is very difficult to keep track of it all. It ended up in the hands of a small number of people who traded it in various ways, and it didn’t always easily and simply end up in pensioners’ hands. This time, we will do it through strict monitoring, with the oversight of the competent security services. It will go via the Post Office, but under strict BIA supervision to ensure we distribute it to pensioners,” Vučić said.
Commenting on the announcement of BIA’s involvement in the voucher distribution, lawyer Ninić said that perhaps Vučić genuinely believes pensioners and his caterers are the most dangerous criminal group in the country, poised to engage in a voucher-smuggling ring for spa holidays. From a legal perspective, as he put it, this is also a kind of admission that a mundane system of voucher distribution in the state does not function properly because everything is contaminated by corruption.
Ninić also asks: where are the control and inspection mechanisms whose actual job this is? “In any case, Article 2 of the BIA Act clearly and exhaustively defines the Agency’s duties, which are: protecting the security of the Republic of Serbia, detecting and preventing activities aimed at undermining or overthrowing the constitutional order, and countering organised crime and criminal offences with a foreign element. Nowhere in the law does it state that BIA operatives are required to play the role of stewards in post office queues, or to check whether ‘Grandma Mara’ is abusing state welfare. This is a classic pattern of exceeding and abusing statutory powers. BIA has no legal basis to oversee the administrative affairs of the Ministry of Tourism, Serbia Post, or the PIO (Pension and Disability Insurance) Fund,” Ninić explains.
The Danas interviewee also notes that if our secret service is monitoring holiday vouchers while billions of euros are simultaneously being drained from the budget through rigged tenders and infrastructure projects without any oversight, then we have officially become a Monty Python state. BIA’s resources, he says, are being degraded to the point of utter absurdity – instead of providing counter-intelligence protection for the country and tracking illicit financial flows, agents are busy simulating order where it is easiest to crack down: on the oldest and poorest.
For Aris Movsesijan, vice-president of the PSG (Free Citizens Movement), the crucial question is how we reached a situation where spa tourism has become a top-tier security issue.
“We have arrived at a Serbia in paradox, where huge forces are deployed for minor matters, while major issues go completely unsupervised. In a country where the government shouts ‘stop thief!’, it is the pensioner’s voucher that is checked most loudly, while corruption issues are pushed into the shadows,” states the PSG vice-president.
Movsesijan observes that by this logic, we will probably soon have an operational assessment of whether a pensioner actually utilised Kopaonik mountain resort or merely “simulated a holiday”, as well as special units checking whether the spa stay had a strategic effect on their blood pressure.
“Meanwhile, on Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perceptions Index, Serbia has dropped to 116th place out of 182 countries, with a score of 33 out of 100, which is a decline of 11 positions and one of the worst results in the last two decades. But for that, it seems, there is no operational assessment. The BIA operative is busy with more important work. In front of the building, they log whether medication is being used correctly. ‘Subject took therapy. No confirmation that aspirin was taken in accordance with procedure. Suspicious behaviour,'” says Movsesijan.
“The primary role of the BIA, the police, the prosecution, and the courts is the protection of organised crime, and particularly the political wing of the mafia headed by Aleksandar Vučić. Occasionally, the BIA is given tasks like this one – to oversee the distribution of vouchers to pensioners – or like last year, to take inventory of prices in shops,” notes Miroslav Parović of the People’s Freedom Movement said.
He adds that these extra activities serve consumers of the Informer-style [pro-government tabloid] worldview, which is based on spreading morbid paranoia. It is also designed to send a message that the enemy is ready to snatch away their spa voucher, but that Vučić is on top of it and the BIA will prevent it.
“Mind you, Ceaușescu in Romania also used the Securitate to control the sale of bread and guarantee that every Romanian would get their ration, yet it turned out the people wanted something else after all,” Parović states.
Verica Milanović, an MP from the Serbia Centre (SRCE), assesses that Aleksandar Vučić and the SNS, through their appointments and influence on the BIA, have reduced this Agency to a level where monitoring the distribution of holiday vouchers to pensioners is a job perfectly suited to its current calibre and capabilities.
Protecting the security of the Republic of Serbia, protecting the classified data of state institutions, defending the country’s defence system from foreign influence, and fighting organised crime are, as she says, a distant memory for this Agency.
“Hacking attacks on the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP), the Business Registers Agency, Telekom, and the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of citizens’ data are not subjects of BIA investigation or involvement. But heaven forbid pensioners should commit a historic fraud with 10,000-dinar holiday vouchers. We are living a dangerous tragicomedy in a Serbia that is left unsecured and systemically ruined by the authorities – authorities whose survival is under threat and who have lost their footing. The complete lack of reaction from the BIA to the imposition of unlawful, absurd tasks, and its failure to engage in matters within its true remit, is proof that once this evil is gone, we must rebuild this crucial Agency from the ground up,” the Serbia Centre MP concludes.
(Danas, 01.07.2026)
https://www.danas.rs/vesti/politika/bia-vauceri-za-penzionere-banjski-turizam/