Private investigators in Serbia
On 9 November 2018, the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia adopted the amendments to the Law on Private Investigation, which were published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia No. 87/18 from 13 November 2018 which will come into force on 21 November 2018.
These amendments define more precisely security checks and security issues, bearing in mind that these terms are used in the Law as one of the conditions for acquiring or revoking licenses for performing this kind of jobs, and previously it was not determined what these terms actually mean.
Another requirement for issuing the licenses is that the legal entity must be registered in the register of business entities in the Republic of Serbia with the appropriate activity code.
Also, among the conditions for obtaining a private investigator license in Serbia, it is stipulated that a legal entity and entrepreneurs must have the proper business premises. This obligation has already been prescribed by Article 8 of the Law, but the amendments to the Law are now explicitly listed in Article 5, which lists all the necessary conditions for obtaining a license.
These amendments also stipulate the conditions for the seizure of licenses to a legal entity, an entrepreneur or a detective, and the deadline for applying for a new license has been extended before the expiration of a valid license from 30 to 45 days, and the provision regarding the issuance of the license in a ceremonial form has been deleted because practice has shown that there is no need for this type of act.
Detectives are, from now on, obliged to deliver to their clients a written report on information and data that she/he has made in the course of the performed works. This amendment additionally protects the rights of users of services, as well as the rights of third parties against eventual transgressions or abuses by detectives.
It is no longer required that a license can be issued only to a person who has completed an internship. In practice, it has been shown that the completion of a six-month internship for a person registered for performing detective activity is dysfunctional, imposing additional unnecessary costs on detectives, especially considering that the largest number of individuals dealing with detective activity has extensive experience in previous work in the police, security intelligence, defense and similar jobs, so every type of additional practice is impractical.
Other changes stipulate some of the less relevant segments of detective activity.