Serbian Finance Minister Sinisa Mali said on Monday that the case of his doctoral thesis is political and added that he would like to tear it up.
Mali has been accused of plagiarizing his doctoral thesis, causing protests and a lock-down in the seat of Belgrade University by a group of students. The Belgrade University Ethics Committee is due to rule on the doctorate by the end of the month after the Faculty of Organizational Sciences (FON) where he got his doctorate ruled that his actions were not in line with academic standards.
Mali told the pro-government TV Pink that he hopes the University Ethics Committee will have the strength to take an objective decision about his doctorate with no opposition pressure exerted. He claimed to have graduated the Belgrade University School of Economy as the best student of his generation and that he holds several diplomas from foreign universities. “The results of my work are what’s important to me,”he said, adding that he does not believe the Ethics Committee will reach an objective decision.
He said that he made a mistake in his doctorate which, according to him, does not mean it was plagiarized. Mali has claimed that his mistake was in not attributing sections of the doctorate properly.