Organized Crime Prosecutor's Office (TOK) and its first man Mladen Nenadic they are between two fires - the regime of Aleksandar Vučić, who would like to abolish them, and the rebellious students and citizens who demand that the prosecutor's office do its job.
The protest held on Thursday (November 20) was supposed to "encourage" Nenadić to arrest whoever he needs to in the case of the General Staff.
That is, the intentions of the progressive authorities to demolish the once monumental building and give the land to Jared Kushner, son-in-law of Donald Trump, to build luxury apartments, a hotel and a casino there.
"We demand that the Prosecutor's Office continue the investigation without fear or pressure, bring to justice all those who participated in the falsification of documents, investigate the role of all civil servants and ministers who, according to testimonies and documents, abused their position," said the protest.
An attempt to arrest Selaković and Malog?
It is not difficult to guess who is being targeted. These days, BIRN has published statements and correspondence from the TOK documentation, from which it follows that the Minister of Culture, Nikola Selaković, specifically requested that the status of a cultural asset be revoked for the General Staff - in violation of procedures and laws. He called those who opposed it "Ustasha".
The other minister in the story is Siniša Mali, the first person in Serbian finance, who is now boasting that Serbia will reap 22,5 percent of the profit from the entire project. He is, according to the writing New York Times, as early as June 2024, called the then directors of the Republic and City Institute for the Protection of Monuments and told them: "Support the project or resign."
Nenadić, whose prosecutor's office is leading these two investigations, which the critical public sees as a prime example of corruption - the railway to Budapest and the General Staff - is silent on everything for now. At the beginning of November, the collegium of the TOK condemned the pressures of the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, but does not communicate with the public or explain its decisions.
While in the case of the construction of the high-speed railway, two former ministers, Goran Vesić and Tomislav Momirović, are suspected, in the case of the General Staff, there are no indications that two current ministers, Selaković and Mali, could be detained, which would be a novelty in Serbia in this millennium.
In the part of the informed bazaar, it is loudly said that the TOK actually issued orders for the arrest of these two, but that the police, now imbued almost exclusively with progressive cadres, simply ignored them.
"According to the information I have, the police refused to act on the order of the public prosecutor for organized crime," lawyer Nikola Lakić said recently on television.
"If all that is true, then we have a small, mini-coup here, where the police do not want to act on the orders of the TOK, where they are hiding those persons who should be part of a broader accusation related to the General Staff," he added.
What awaits Mladen Nenadić?
If so, TOK or Nenadić did not inform the public about it. Nor, in general, what are they planning with the investigation, for which it would be bizarre to stop with some bureaucrats from the institute for the protection of monuments. Hardly anyone believes that they falsified the documentation about the General Staff on their own.
"Why doesn't the prosecutor for organized crime go and arrest them all? Or at least go public and say why he doesn't arrest. I don't understand what's waiting there. We have all the names, actors, documents, who slandered, who ordered," said colleague Slobodan Georgiev in "Vremen's" podcast "This Situation."
He called the student protest a "gathering of support" for the prosecutor Nenadić and his team to show if they are really doing their job or if it is an "intra-regime collusion" between two currents.
"It is impossible that we do not have an indictment and that we do not have those people from Selaković on down arrested. And I believe that both Mr. Vučić and Mr. Mali have something to say about those circumstances," Georgiev added.
Attempt to shut down TOK
On the other hand, the regime is preparing a silk cord for the TOK by launching the "idea" of placing the entire prosecutor's office under the jurisdiction of the Belgrade Higher Public Prosecutor's Office, which is headed by the notorious Nenad Stefanović, who is described by the expert public as a "loyalist" of Vučić.
The intention to disband TOK was first spoken by SNS MP Uglješa Mrdić, the chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for Justice, and a man who few had heard of until the alleged hunger strike began. patch on Diana Hrka, the mother of the young man who died under the canopy. The idea was then supported by the Minister of Justice, Nenad Vujić, otherwise also inconspicuous.
However, in the excess of events from which Serbia suffers chronically, this news remained almost unnoticed, although there are protests from the professional public. Lawyer Sofija Mandić reminds that it is the TOK that has the power to treat MPs and ministers.
"In the case of the General Staff, we have strong indications that TOK tried to arrest two current ministers, who did not resign, namely Siniša Mali and Nikola Selaković, and that SBPOK refused to carry out the order," she repeats. SBPOK is the Service for Combating Organized Crime, a unit of the MUP that should not have a superior principal than TOK.
"The executive power is afraid of investigations and arrests in its own ranks. It no longer sees any way to prevent it except to disband the prosecution itself," says Mandic.
As she further said in the Peščanika podcast, in the case of the canopy, TOK showed signs of life, that is, it showed that it sees itself as a branch of government. That shook the regime, he says, and was followed by a series of threats, name-calling, tabloid accusations that the prosecutors were carrying out a coup d'état, that it was a "prosecutor mafia".
President Vučić, reminds Mandić, directly played with supreme courage when he issued pardons for several thugs - those who beat students in Novi Sad, which caused the formal fall of the Government, or the woman who almost killed a student with a car.
Decision time for TOK
According to Sofija Mandić, there is bad news and good news in the new attacks on TOK. It is bad that the regime even comes up with the idea of dismembering the other branch of government. "But if there is something good, it is the fact that they no longer have other mechanisms of pressure on these prosecutions, as they had before."
Thus, TOK, and especially Mladen Nenadić as the first authority of that important prosecution, found themselves between a rock and a hard place.
For now, they are mediocre at it, like the character Bora Todorović plays in "Balkan Express". He changes his mind as to whether or not he is a musician, because he does not know which answer is more favorable. And then he would leave, just to take the medicine to his aunt. Nenadic does not have that option.
On the website of TOK, after the announcement about Vučić's pressures, there is only one more announcement, from Tuesday (November 18). A group that falsified diplomas and certificates was arrested. They thus acquired 132.000 euros. You're petty, someone would say.
