16 February 2010 | 09:37 | Source: Blic daily, Belgrade
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BELGRADE -- Bishop Artemije’s closest associates and advisors are being investigated, according to Belgrade daily Blic.
The daily writes that the bishop’s chief advisor took RSD 700,000 for a humanitarian campaign for the hungry in Kosovo to tie together his employment years. The Interior Ministry (MUP) is expected to begin an investigation into the financial abuses on Tuesday, according to this.
The Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) forwarded all documentation to the police on Sunday. The bishop, who heads the Raško-Prizren Eparch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, was temporarily dismissed from his duties on Sunday.
According to the suspicions of the police, the money that was being sent to the Eparchy for the soup kitchens in Kosovo was going straight to private riches and luxurious lifestyles for several of Artemije’s closest colleagues, including Monk Simeon Vilovski, his brother Vladimir Vilovski, his godson Predrag Subotički and Gordana Markovic, who was the director of the State Bureau for the Protection of Cultural Monuments in 2007.
Much of the money as given to the so-called office for heritage of the Rska-Prizren Eparchy, which has done little other than creating several pamphlets, writes Blic.
At first Eparchy money funded the office, but once it ran dry, Vilovski started using money that was donated to the soup kitchens in Kosovo, the daily writes, adding that the money was meant to help feed 1,200 hungry Serbs in four such soup kitchens in the province.
