Serbian police arrested the mayor of an affluent town and prominent politician from President Boris Tadic's party in a crackdown on organized crime, local reports said Wednesday.
Goran Knezevic, two-time mayor of Zrenjanin since 2006, was arrested along with several other suspects allegedly involved in rigging tenders for public services and shady land deals.
An economist by vocation, Knezevic, 51, was a Serbian legislator in 2003-07. A former professional athlete, he was also the president of the basketball organization of Serbia and Montenegro in 2005-06.
He was until recently a member of the top policy-making body in Tadic's Democratic Party, though he was replaced in June 2007 as the regional Democrats chief amid rumors of shady deals.
Zrenjanin, 70 kilometres north of Belgrade, at the heart of the northern Serbia's farmlands, is a rich town by Serbian standards. It was also rated as investor-friendly by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank in 2006 and 2007, already under Knezevic's administration.
The arrests occurred a month after Tadic warned his own party membership that nobody would be protected in a crackdown on corruption. Serbia has been ranked as one of Europe's most corrupt countries by the organization Transparency International.
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