page_title: Siniša Mali plagiarism scandal
section_title: Doctorate
hierarchical_section_title: Siniša Mali plagiarism scandal / Doctorate
caption_attribution_description: faculty for organisational researches (belgrade) - fakultet organizacionih nauka (beograd)
context_page_description: Siniša Mali plagiarism scandal refers to the political scandal in Serbia which led to the 2019 annulment of the 2013 doctoral dissertation of economist and politician Siniša Mali by the Belgrade University. After the first plagiarism claims in 2014, the process spanned for over 5 years, during which Mali progressed from the position of mayor of Belgrade to the office of the finance minister in the Serbian government, and became a member of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party. In time, question of Mali's doctorate crossed the lines of academia becoming a political affair and a much wider social issue in Serbia due to the inactivity of the state and educational institutions regarding this matter, which in turn provoked public protests, university's blockade by the students and a fierce public and political division.
context_section_description: Mentored by professor Dragan Đuričin, Siniša Mali in 2002 originally submitted his thesis at the faculty where he studied, the Faculty of Economics (EKOF). The title of the thesis was Privatization by the Method of Enterprises Selling - Theoretical Concepts and the Case of Serbia. After 9 years, the report on the work wasn't adopted by the EKOF in 2011, and Mali's public defense of the dissertation was refused. The faculty rejected his submission, concluding the work is of low quality and without scientific value.
  Mali then modified it and submitted it to the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Organizational Sciences (FON) under the title Value Creation through the Process of Restructuring and Privatisation – Theoretical Concepts and the Case of Serbia. There he obtained his PhD in 2013. The commission included professors Ondrej Jaško (new mentor), Slađana Barjaktarović Rakočević and Đuričin.
  Switching of the faculties later became part of the controversy. Professor Đuričin, one of the members of the commission which accepted Mali's thesis at the FON, actually claimed that Mali wrote two doctorates, the one rejected at the FE, and one accepted by the FON. Submitting one the same thesis at two faculties is forbidden and the Faculty of Economics never published Mali's original thesis nor the reasons why it was rejected, so it remains unclear if these were different theses. Mali stated that he wrote the thesis for 3 years, which would mean that he concurrently wrote two theses. Dean of the FON at the time of Mali's defense of the thesis, professor Milan Martić, confirmed that Mali's doctoral dissertation was rejected at the FE, after which he has published his dissertation at the FON. He also stated that 50% of the dissertation was different from the first one, but the original dissertation remained unpublished.
caption: Faculty of Organizational Sciences, where Siniša Mali defended his doctoral thesis in 2013
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