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The list of Dragan Palma Markovic s official positions during his three-decade stampede through the ranks of Serbian politics is long.
The 60-year-old is currently a lawmaker in the National Assembly, chairman of the coalition party United Serbia (JS), and city council president of Jagodina, a quaint town 135 kilometers southeast of Belgrade.
He was also mayor of Jagodina for eight years until 2012, lifting up its bedraggled postindustrial profile with new trappings of tourism like an artificial waterfall, an aquapark, a zoo, a stadium, and a sprawling shopping center.
Markovic also served as a deputy minister of agriculture, forestry, and water management in Serbia s first government after the ouster of strongman Slobodan Milosevic in 2001.
Higher Prosecutor’s Office in Jagodina in central
Serbia told BIRN that it will examine claims that veteran MP and senior municipal official Dragan ‘Palma’ Markovic was involved in parties at which underage girls were sexually exploited.
The vice-president of the opposition Party of Freedom and Justice, Marinika Tepic claimed at a press conference on Monday that “the procurement of women and girls [for sex] is an everyday thing in Jagodina, where Dragan Markovic ‘Palma’ rules”.
Markovic, the president of the Jagodina Assembly, denied the accusation, claiming that Tepic is lying.
At Monday’s press conference, Tepic played a video of a man, with his face hidden and voice altered, claiming that he worked in a hotel in Koncarevo, a small village near Jagodina, where parties were held and “girls were brought by taxi from Belgrade”.