Supreme Public Prosecution Office Calls Committee Session Severest Example of Undue Influence to Date

Ugljesa Mrdic (BETAPHOTO/MILAN ILIC)

The Supreme Public Prosecution Office said in a press release on Dec. 1 that the manner in which a session of the Serbian parliament's Committee on Justice, State Administration and Local Government was called and the statements made before and after it by MPs was "without precedent the severest form of undue influence on public prosecutor's offices in Serbia recorded to date."

The press release reads that the "goal was to carry out ideas, announced earlier, of changing the role, organization and manner in which the prosecutor's offices worked, ideas that are in direct opposition with the existing Constitution and reforms from 2022, and with Serbia's international obligations in the rule of law and implementation of the Action Plan for EU accession."

The parliamentary committee, whose chairman is Ugljesa Mrdic, an official of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, refused to accept the Supreme Public Prosecution Office's five-year reports and recommended that the parliament do the same.

At the Committee session, Mrdic said a part of the prosecutor's office "broke away from the state" and mentioned by name prosecutor general Zagorka Dolovac and special prosecutor for organized crime Mladen Nenadic, calling their work intransparent.

The Supreme Public Prosecution Office said in the press release that it had followed existing laws and regulations fully and regularly submied annual reports on the work of public prosecutor's offices, stressing that the Serbian parliament had "not once in the last five years requested a presentation of the submitted Annual Reports, nor did it request any clarification or additional data."

"All of a sudden, the chairman of the Committee on Justice, Administration and Local Government schedules, in the afternoon hours, the presentation of five annual reports at once within less than 24 hours, that is, for Monday, Dec. 1," the press release recalled.

The Supreme Public Prosecution Office condemned these actions by chairman Mrdic as "a malicious attempt at undue influence on the prosecutor general and all public prosecutor's offices."