Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection views yesterday’s behaviour of member of parliament Marjan Rističević in the National Assembly as primitive, based on fabrications and unacceptable.

The Commissioner does not wish to comment on the rude remarks, which are so typical of this member of parliament, or to speculate about his motives. However, for the sake of the public, he feels he must comment on the claim that the Commissioner and the Protector of Citizens allegedly “received 80,000 euros from the United Kingdom and who knows how they spent them” and have been “enemies of the Serbian Government ever since.”

These insinuations relate to a project implemented by the Commissioner from grants by the British and Dutch embassies almost four years ago, from which neither the Commissioner nor the Protector of Citizens nor any of the employees in the institutions which they represent received a single dinar.

It was the project “Whistleblower Protection in Serbia”, which involved the engagement of numerous individuals over many months and numerous activities to examine the treatment of whistleblowers, to affirm the need for their protection and, finally, to develop a Model Law on Whistleblower Protection, which Serbia did not have at the time.

The project was very successful, not only in the opinion of the donors, but also according to a number of independent experts. For this reason, the international global network Transparency International asked and obtained access to the project from the Commissioner.

The Model Law was made available to the Government of Serbia, specifically the Ministry of Justice; however, they chose to spend budget funds to draft a different model, which resulted in the enactment of the Law on Whistleblower Protection two years later.

Both donors made available a total sum of EUR 94,330.25 for project implementation purposes. The Commissioner did not withdraw the full available amount; instead, he withdrew only EUR 80,330.79. Eventually, even these withdrawn funds were not fully spent, so the remaining amount of EUR 3,667.69 was returned to the donors.

The Financial Execution Report is available for download here.

In this context, Commissioner Rodoljub Šabić said:

“I have absolutely no intention of discussing MP Marjan Rističević. Indeed, the very thought of it is sickening, because this is a person who manages to stand out as particularly abhorrent in a public space that is literally teaming with primitivism, aggression and lies.

However, for the sake of the public, I feel compelled to support his idea to “investigate the Commissioner’s operations.” Accordingly, notwithstanding the fact that the Financial Execution Report of the project is publicly available on the Commissioner’s website, I hereby publicly invite the budget inspectorate, the SAI or any journalist or citizen, anyone who is interested in seeking any information or financial document relating to the project in question, and I guarantee they will have access to it.

My invitation is addressed directly to the said member of parliament. In return, I would like to invite him, also for the sake of the public – fully aware that he is unlikely to ever respond – to try and attempt to explain to that same public why the Serbian judiciary has been powerless to enable the scammed creditors to collect their multi-million claims from the companies Rističević Family, Seljak Zeka Company, Lischenberg Group etc., what relationship he has with those companies, why other government authorities have been unable to collect from those companies dozens of millions in evaded taxes which harmed the Republic of Serbia and why prosecutors’ offices have been unable to investigate and prosecute those companies pursuant to numerous criminal reports filed against them.”