Saša Radulović (economist)

Early life

Born in Bihać to a Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) officer father, Radulović graduated from the University of Sarajevo's Faculty of Electrical Engineering, specializing in automation and electronics.

In the 1980s, Radulović was part of the New Primitivism cultural movement created in Sarajevo, together with Emir Kusturica and members of the rock band Zabranjeno Pušenje. His close associate Dušan Pavlović also comes from 1980s Yugoslav pop culture, as a former member of the Belgrade-based band Vampiri.

His father, Dr. Budimir Radulović (Chief of the Army Medical Corps and other authorities), was killed on 3 May 1992 in the Yugoslav People's Army column incident in Sarajevo.

He emigrated from the Socialist Republic of Serbia at the end of the 1980s. He lived and worked in several countries, including the United States, Canada, and Germany.

Professional career

In 1990, Radulović moved to Germany where he worked at Siemens AG on system monitoring for nuclear plants located in Germany, United States, and Russia. The job required him to move to the U.S.

In 1994, he began working in Toronto, Canada, for Antares Alliance, a subsidiary of Amdahl/EDS, as a relational database development team manager, before switching to Interpro Medical Network, initially as vice president of development, and then as one of the members the Board of Directors. From 1997 to 2001 he was the general manager of the company dealing with servers for TrueSpectre pictures. Together with colleagues from the company, he designed the architecture and algorithms that process images on the servers. From 2002 to 2006 he was an advisor to several investment companies.

Political career

Radulović came back to Serbia from the United States in 2005, and became a pioneer blogger, writing on economics, business and tax reforms. Professionally, he owned a company and worked as bankruptcy trustee for several other companies. He is licensed as a bankruptcy trustee and portfolio manager.

Radulović has worked as Advisor to the Council of Europe, OSCE, US Embassy, GIZ, NALED, and the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises. He also provided training to the Serbian police and prosecutors on how to prosecute financial crimes.

In 2013 he was appointed as non-partisan Minister of Economy in the SNS-led government. During his brief tenure he came to the fore for a text in the magazine Nedeljnik in which he fiercely criticized their former economic policy in Serbia, including the privatization process and the associated corruption. The text is often cited not only in Serbian, but also in the media other former Yugoslav states. During his ministerial tenute, Radulović tried to bring transparency based on a vision of open government, but perceived to be obstructed by other SNS ministers. He was openly attacked by PM Vucic when he decided to stop several privatization processes, which he deemed shady. Radulović resigned from the post of Minister filed on 24 January 2014.

Elections

On 2 February 2014, Radulović announced that he would participate in the parliamentary elections on 16 March 2014 with his own list. His movement Dosta je bilo (It's Enough) garnered 74,973 votes (2.09%), remaining below the 5% threshold. His list had been the only one to publish a consolidated electoral programme with action plans on different policy areas.

At the Serbian parliamentary election, 2016, his movement Dosta je bilo tripled its support and with 6.02% of votes it obtained 16 seats.

Private life

He is married and has two children. Apart from his native Serbian language, he speaks English and German.