BELGRADE: Six people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died.

The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on November 1, 2024 and was widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight.

It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government.

The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths.

In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into the corruption aspect of the case and Friday’s arrests were linked to this.

The six, all suspected of abuse of office, include former construction, transport and infrastructure minister Tomislav Momirovic as well as former acting director of the state-run Serbian Railway Infrastructure company Nebojsa Surlan, prosecutors said.

They said nine other people, including former transport minister Goran Vesic who was among the first to resign after the accident, were being sought.

According to the Nova.rs news site, Vesic was hospitalized and underwent emergency surgery on Friday.

Two companies — China Railway International and China Communications Construction (CRI-CCC) — as well as France’s Egis and Hungary’s Utiber were in charge of the railway station works.

According to the prosecutor’s office, the two former ministers and three other suspects enabled CRI — CCC to charge more than $1.2 billion for work and then carry out additional work worth more than $64 million.

This enabled CRI-CCC to obtain an “illegal financial gain” of more than $18 million, the statement said.

Since the accident, protests have been growing across Serbia, with some bringing hundreds of thousands of people to the streets to demand a transparent investigation and early elections.

A new protest was due on Friday evening in the capital Belgrade to commemorate nine months since the accident.