Belgrade-based magazine "to sue Anti-Corruption Council"

Belgrade-based magazine "to sue Anti-Corruption Council"

Pajtic is the head of the provincial government in Vojvodina, where his party is in power - at the state level, the DS is in the opposition.

The magazine said today that the interview they published was two, and not, as stated in the report, five pages long, and that they charged for "a promo text about Vojvodina."

According to this, the article, published in the March 13, 2014 edition, was "clearly marked as a 'special' in a different color, with the logo 'vojvodina.org.gov.rs'."

The content was provided by the authorities of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina and was charged according to the pricelist - "therefore there is not a single reason to put the emphasis on the magazine as problematic, especially on 'the paid five-page interview'."

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said the Anti-Corruption Council's "revelation that DS leader Bojan Pajtic was paying the media to publish interviews with him using people's and state's money" was "a scandal."

"There is no worse scandal in the world," said Vucic, adding, "I never paid for any interview."

He then asked reporters "if they found anywhere that he ever paid anyone for an interview - except the program about the media broadcast on the N1 television, where the worst things were said about me."

"I paid RSD 800,000 for that without exactly knowing it was paid for," Vucic remarked, and consulted with his associates "which ministry financed that," to then tell reporters: "The Ministry of Culture experts paid that."

The Council's document - dubbed "The report on the possible influence of public sector institutions on media through payment of advertising and marketing services" - found that from 2011 until 2014, Bojan Pajtic paid more than RSD 103 million from the budget to cover marketing and media advertising expense.

The full text of the working version of the report is available here (PDF format; Serbian only)