Minister of Culture Nikola Selakovic on July 10, 2024, personally asked the acting director of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of the City of Belgrade, Aleksandar Ivanović, to submit a document proposing the abolition of the status of cultural property for General Staff in the center of Belgrade.
This is what Ivanovic said on September 29, 2025 at the hearing at the Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime, reveals BIRN.
Ivanovic stated that he refused such a request, that he clearly said that he did not have the authority to send such a proposal for a decision, but also that in the end he gave in under the minister's pressure, and that he did not think that he had committed any criminal act.
Ivanovic specified that Selakovic "asked him four times" to name the document "proposal", and that Slavica Jelača, the secretary in Ministry of Culture, who was also present at the meeting, asked for it two more times.
Ivanovic: I have no authority.
He also stated that he suggested that it be made in the form of an expert opinion, because he, as the acting director of the Belgrade Institute, "does not have any authority, nor can it produce any legal effect in terms of procedures or procedures for erasing properties of cultural property".
"However, he (Selaković) very insistently demanded that it be in the form of the word 'proposal', even though the text itself is not even a concept, but a sketch of something that I absolutely did not know what it could be used for," said Ivanovic about the proposed decision that he submitted to the Ministry of Culture.
Ivanovic repeatedly asked Selakovic to respect his request that it remain at the level of opinion or explanation "so that the situation is completely clear".
Ivanovic also stated that he was aware that, as the director of the City Institute, he does not have the authority to send such proposals for decisions, but that the Republic Institute is responsible for that, as well as that a whole team of experts should stand behind that proposal.
Selaković was "relentless"
He stated that he convinced Selaković that the document should take the form of an "opinion" and not a proposal, "but Selaković was inexorable."
"However, you know, I didn't want to, so I did, I was just appointed, it was a month after the appointment, you know, if I may say popularly - the ministerial one is not refused. Why did I do it - because I knew that I was not committing a criminal offense and that it had no legal effect", said Ivanovic at the Prosecutor's Office.
Ivanovic also stated that the director of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, Goran Vasic, said that he could not delete the General Staff from the central register of immovable cultural property, because experts from his institute did not want to give him administrative access to the Register, which is in electronic form.
At the same time, Ivanovic explained that the Ministry of Culture subsequently asked him to prepare an explanation of the proposal for the decision to remove protection from the General Staff, because, as he was told by the ministry, the director of the Republic Institute "is not capable" of that.
Aleksandar Ivanović, Goran Vasić and Slavica Jelača, secretary in the Ministry of Culture, are suspected of having committed a prolonged criminal offense of abuse of office.
Vasić, according to his own admission in the prosecution, forged the document by taking the number from the case in which he begs the Ministry of Culture to solve his housing issue and using that number he made the requested draft decision for the General Staff.
Full text on this topic read on BIRN's portal.
