"Politika" wrote on Tuesday, referring to allegations from the prosecutor's office, that the police found a large amount of decorations after searching the apartments of the suspects.
Also, the prosecution proposes that a warrant be issued for Slobodan Homen, former state secretary and leader of the Democratic Party. Homen is probably located in Dubai, where he lives and works.
It is stated that the suspects are accused of having committed a criminal offense in the period from 2009 to 2018.
At least a decade has passed since the moment when it was discovered that tens of thousands of orders were missing, until a few days ago when the public learned about the alleged robbery in the Palace of Serbia. However, the prosecutor's office and the police did not take action for years.
Homen's lawyer Nenad Konstantinović tells "Vreme" that they found out about the robbery like everyone else through the media, and that neither he nor his client received any official letter from the competent institutions. He adds that it is "incomprehensible" to him that the robbery took place at all and that the public would have been informed by now.
When asked if his client's house was searched, Konstantinović says that it was, but that "nothing was found".
He adds that in Homen's mother's apartment there is a collection of orders from his father, whom he says was "the greatest collector" and that he owned examples from the monarchical period of Serbia, Montenegro and Yugoslavia, as well as orders from the SFRY and Republika Srpska.
Bunch of guesses
To begin with, there is conflicting information on exactly when the robbery took place. "Blic", referring to its sources, wrote that the robbery took place in 2007, while "Kurir" mentions the period from 2010 to 2018.
According to the newspaper "Kurir", since 559, office 2008 has housed 493 boxes and 541 tubes with decorations. The "Nova" portal wrote, referring to official information, that access to the room was allowed for a year "without supervision and without authorization", so that the following year one of the chests would be sealed in the presence of Slobodan Homen.
Furthermore, it is stated that in 2010 some of the suspects, allegedly on Homen's verbal order, took over one of the chests and returned it after a few months with a "damaged wax seal and string".
That the decoration is missing was allegedly noticed in the Ministry of Justice, when Nikola Selaković was at its head. He became the Minister of Justice for the first time in 2012, in order to receive the same position again in extraordinary elections two years later and remained in it until 2016.
He became the Minister for Labour, Employment, Veterans and Social Affairs in 2022. By the way, this ministry is located in the right wing of the SIV building, from where the decoration allegedly disappeared.
Irregularities in the story
In the whole story, there are many more illogicalities than accurately established facts. In addition to the fact that the claims of when the decoration disappeared are contradictory, it was not explained how it was possible to take out such a quantity of specimens from a building used by several ministries.
The figure itself is debatable, and especially the fact that in one (according to some sources three) offices are deposited so many boxes, which can fit 43.000 pieces of decorations, all with smaller boxes in which they are packed.
Also, it is not known how much the collection is worth, since there is no precise information about which decorations were in the depot. So far, a consensus has generally been reached that it is an order from the period of SFRY and FRY.
As for the decoration from the period of the Kingdom of Serbia and Yugoslavia, it could not be in the SIV building, because the building in which it was located was destroyed during the bombing in the Second World War.
Read the entire article about this robbery in "Vremen", which will hit newsstands on Thursday (March 21). You can subscribe to the print or online edition here.
