Member of State Prosecutorial Council Supports Dismissed Prosecutors, Lawyers, Opposition Urge Protests

Predrag Milovanovic (Photo: Print Screen You Tube)

An elective member of the State Prosecutorial Council, Predrag Milovanovic, “strongly supported” on Feb. 27 two prosecutors, Bojana Savovic and Jasmina Paunovic, dismissed while running the so-called “EPS case,” involving embezzlement and fraud in the state-run power monopoly EPS, suggesting that “the developments need to be resolved by the Council.”

“To put it in  a Hamletian way, there is something rotten in the Higher Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade. It is not difficult to see that there’s some sort of oppression there,” Milovanovic said in an interview with the N1 TV, adding that more prosecutors had been exposed to harassment by the chief prosecutor, Nenad Stefanovic.

A deputy to the president of the Association of Judges and Prosecutors, Lazar Lazovic, said that criticism by the Higher Prosecutor’s office and the chief prosecutor, Nenad Stefanovic, of the developments in the EPS case constituted “undue influence, including political pressure, too.”

Lazovic explained in a press release that there was nothing irregular in changing the annual schedule of a prosecutor’s office, and that Savovic and Paunovic “were not dismissed,” but merely transferred, adding that everything that had been done in the EPS case had to be consented by Stefanovic.

The organization committee preparing lawyers’ protests on March 2 to support the two dismissed prosecutors called in an open letter their peers in the academic community and other professional associations to raise their voices and join the rally.

Several opposition MPs appealed to citizens during a session of the Parliament of Serbia to join the protests, and the speaker, Vladimir Orlic, would switch off their microphones, saying that the MPs “are missing the agenda.”