N4.T2 – Worryingly high number of unlawful verdicts in favour of defendants – Ignorance or corruption?
HRA NEWSLETTER 4 – TOPIC2
In 2024, the Supreme State Prosecutor’s Office submitted 10 requests for the protection of legality; the Supreme Court approved them, stating that the law had been violated in favour of the defendants in all of them. In other words, judgments that were passed were favourable for the defendants. However, this conclusion of the Supreme Court does affect the above decisions, which will remain legally binding.
Chief Special Prosecutor Vladimir Novović told Vijesti that the number of such decisions is now many times higher than in the previous decade. From 2020 to 2023, violations of the law in favour of the defendants were found in a total of 11 cases.
“Although those decisions of the lower-instance courts prevented further conduct of appropriate proceedings, the highest court in the country confirmed that the Special State Prosecutor’s Office acted correctly and lawfully when it initiated those proceedings, that is, when it undertook certain procedural actions and made decisions on charging certain persons”, said Novović.
Violation of the law was noted in cases that involved the most serious crimes, namely the “cryptocurrency king” Do Kwon, the suspected leaders of the Kavač criminal clan, Radoje Zvicer and Slobodan Kašćelan, the policeman on the run Ljubo Milović…
“Certainly, such decisions render the efforts of SDT and SPO in the fight against organised crime and corruption meaningless, which is an additional reason for these cases to be subjected to special controls, in order – first of all – to eliminate doubts that decisions made in favour of the defendants are the result of corruption”, said attorney Veselin Radulović for Vijesti, explaining that this shows that the situation in the judiciary is truly bad.
Supreme State Prosecutor Milorad Marković previously assessed that the decisions of the Supreme Court regarding requests for the protection of legality nevertheless “provided guidelines to the courts and the prosecutor’s office as to how they ought to act”.
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