DS-led urban mafia runs up Belgrade new homes prices: Serbia's reform a joke

It is a common knowledge in Belgrade that if you wanna get any of the necessary licenses for construction of new homes that you need to bribe municipal and city bureaucrats. This practice was firmly established by SPO when they took over the Belgrade administration from SPS in 1997 and was perfected later by the DS urban mafia to a level of existence of the grey price list for every single step in construction of new homes. These costs are estimated in an excellent daily Blic article (link attached) to be over 30% of the price of the new homes.

Moreover, organized political parties' mafia clans ("firms" may be the best name for it, SRS started first behaving like one when started cashing their electoral successes), led by DS, in purpose to keep away big international real estate investors (like those Israeli companieds that constructed thousand of flats in Budapest where square meter costs 1/2-2/3 of the Belgrade's), as well as any effort to modernize the real estate regulation in Serbia and that way make it more transparent and accountable.

This way the real estate business in Serbia- read Belgrade- remains to be a major source of power and wealth for a number of political aparatchiks, their bosses and their political parties. No wonder that Serbia has not any serious budgetary mechanisms controlled by the parliament nor the final account for past seven years, not there is financial control of the political parties finances inclusive of the electoral finances.

In short, DS led political parties and big business mafias have completely hijacked the flow of money and wealth in this country and have never placed themselves in the position of accountability and transparency hence making Serbia a 19 century country in terms of the development of good governance practices and state of democracy. Should we take into an account the bad record on individual and collective human rights, etatist and command organized economy with a system of drainage of in purpose not private huge public and parties controlled sector, and a mere indirect electoral system for the parliament , then it becomes obvious that Serbia represents a joke in terms of achieved reform goals towards a free market and modern libertarian democracy.

Full text on construction mafia in Belgrade
http://www.blic.co.yu/temadana.php?id=45562