Belgrade University Ethics Committee unanimously decided: a non-academic behaviour

Belgrade University Ethics Committee unanimously decided: a non-academic behaviour

The Belgrade University Ethics Committee on its today's session unanimously overruled the Faculty of Organizational Sciences Academic Committee's decision, determining the existence of non-academic behavior of Sinisa Mali in writing his PhD, Tanjug reported.

As stated in the Committee's press release, in his PhD entitled “Value Creation through the Process of Restructuring and Privatization – Theoretical Concepts and Achieved Results in Serbia”, obtained at the University of Belgrade’s Faculty of Organizational Sciences (FOS) in 2013, Mali committed violations of Article 22 of the Code of Professional Ethics.

The standpoint was presented that Mali violated University's Ethics Code because "he cited other authors without the attributions".

The FON Professional Ethics Commission decided to punish Mali with “public condemnation,” but failed to vote on whether it was plagiarism though some members demanded that, it is stated in the press release.

Ethics Committee said it would pass on its final decision to the University Senate "which should act in line with the Book of Rules on the procedure of annulling the diploma and its supplement", it is said in the statement.

Minister of finance soon reacted on the decision, from the Serbian Parliament, where he presently presents next year's budget proposal, adding that right now he was only interested in the draft of the 2020 budget.

Mali also said that he would talk about his PhD in the next few days.

"I know what I know, I know I didn't do that. I cannot even comment on the fact that someone is bothered with that for political reasons. Anyway, I will talk about it in the next few days, while right now, I am only interested in the Serbian budget, and to deal with what I was paid for by the citizens of Serbia", Mali stated for Tanjug.