The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection estimates that the actions of the Ministry of Finance on some decisions of the Commissioner for Information confuse and misinform the public and call into question the authority of the law and government bodies.

The immediate cause for this Commissioner’s estimation is the fact that the Ministry of Finance did not act on the Commissioner’s order that the Ministry should make the information about 50 biggest tax and contribution debtors in the Republic available to the public and the fact that, using completely unfounded legal arguments, the Ministry has been trying to justify their actions.

In connection to this, the Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic has also said:

“The request of the B92 TV Show “Insajder” to make the information about 50 biggest tax and contribution debtors available to the public is legal and legitimate. The Ministry of Finance declined the request citing that this piece of information is “top secret”, and that it would be available only after certain amendments to the Tax Procedure and Tax Administration Act are adopted.

This explanation speaks either of concerning lack of knowledge of the relevant regulations or, what is even worse, of conscious disregard of those regulations, and any possible amendments to the Tax Procedure and Tax Administration Act in the cited direction make no sense and there is no need for them.

It is true that the Article 7 of the Tax Procedure Act which was passed in 2002 defines almost all information that the Tax Administration deals with as “top secret” but that provision has long since lost its legal significance. Namely, in 2009 Serbia passed the Data Confidentiality Act which is both lex specialis and lex posteriori and which is absolutely relevant in connection to issues of determining and protecting confidential data and which does not even mention the term “top secret”.

Article 8 of the Data Confidentiality Act expressly states that a piece of information can be determined as confidential if disclosing it would cause damage when “the need to protect the interests of the Republic of Serbia prevails over the interest in the free access to information”. In this particular case, I believe, it is more than obvious that there is neither predominant nor any kind of interest of the Republic of Serbia to withhold the requested data from the public, which, among other things, led the Commissioner himself when he adopted TV B92 complaint.

Finally, Article 25 of the Data Confidentiality Act expressly imposes an obligation on the authorities to recall the data confidentiality on the basis of the Commissioner’s decision and Article 99 states that if not done so, the person in charge of that authority will be punished for an offence."