"No legal outcomes" to Serbia's wiretapping affairs

"No legal outcomes" to Serbia's wiretapping affairs

According to Justice Minister Nikola Selaković the equipment was found in a room where Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić was to hold a meeting with representatives of the Trilateral Commission.

Selaković accused Mišković of being behind the incident, while Defense Minister Bratislav Gašić said the VBA would investigate and forward its findings to the prosecution.

Similar accusations were heard in the past, when President Tomislav Nikolić complained to the media he and Vučić were being wiretapped. Although that affair was given as one reason for the sacking of five heads of police directorates, no charges have been brought to date against anyone.

The daily spoke with people "from security structures" who noted that all these affairs had one thing in common - the absence of any sort of legal outcome. However, they disagree when asked why this is the case.

Faculty of Security professor Darko Trifunović says the reason why there has not been any definitive answer to who is wiretapping state officials is "the politicization of security services and the consequential drop in their professionalism."

"There's the drone affair, the cases when state officials' motorcades were intercepted, and nobody answered for that. Since politicians are installing their own people in the services, that has led to bad personnel solutions. The result is negligence and the creation of a chaotic atmosphere," he said.

Union University Faculty of Law professor Bogoljub Milosavljević thinks there are two possible reasons for the lack of "legal epilogues":

"One option is that there is no evidence to back up these accusations. In other words, the accusations represent a form of political advertising. The other is that the services are objectively unable to prove who is behind the attempts to violate the privacy of the top officials."

The daily also asked former head of the Yugoslav Army (VJ) Security Department Aco Tomić for comment. Tomić said he "saw no reason why somebody would want to wiretap Vučić," and added:

"They have no idea what to do with themselves, and then say such things to put themselves on a pedestal. This type of information would not be released to the public in normal countries."