Krusik’s employee, Aleksandar Obradovic is not a whistleblower because he did not follow legal procedures, Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said on Sunday.
“The fact that someone likes what Aleksandar Obradovic is, gave them the idea to call him a whistleblower, even though the legal conditions for that were not met. This was also confirmed by the people from Pistaljka (Whistle) Association who called on him to register as a whistleblower. The rule of law is the rule of law. We abide by the laws,” the Prime Minister said in Pancevo.
She urged the competent institutions to work under the law and not to succumb to “pressure from either side”. Brnabic had previously described the Krusik affair as an invented affair, and said she would suggest to her ministers not to answer questions about it.
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Aleksandar Obradovic, an employee of the Krusik arms factory in Valjevo, has been under house arrest since October 14 at his home in Valjevo, on the accusations of disclosing trade secrets.
Before that, he spent three weeks in the central prison in Belgrade after being arrested on September 18 for providing the media with documentation showing that private companies were buying arms at a preferential price from the state factory Krusik. Among these was the GIM Company, which is linked to the name of Branko Stefanovic, father of the Serbian interior minister.
Serbian Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic has repeatedly denied his father’s relationship with the GIM Company.
On November 18th, the Organized Crime Prosecutor’s Office asked the Information Security Agency (BIA) and the Military Security Agency (VBA) to examine Krusik’s dealings with private arms traffickers.
Meanwhile, in Belgrade and other Serbian cities, citizens have been signing a petition to free Obradovic. The petition, which has so far been signed by more than 30,000 people, should be submitted today to the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Belgrade.
(Radio Free Europe, 15.12.2019)
https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/30326761.html
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