“Elektromreža Srbije” v. “Radar”

Mihailo Jovićević, Vesna Mališić, Vuk Cvijić (Journalist)

Radar

In progress.

1. With the lawsuit that initiated the procedure, the plaintiff uses an imbalance of power, such as his financial advantage, political/social influence or authority as a power holder, in which way he puts pressure on the defendant – an actor participating in the public debate.

The plaintiff is a state-owned, public company, and it is a key and probably the most powerful state-owned company in the country.

2. The arguments presented by the prosecutor are partially or completely unfounded.

In an interview, a doctor of electrical engineering with over 25 years of experience in this field spoke about the state of Serbia’s electric power system. It is interesting that just one day after the interview, an accident actually occurred at a substation, which left several thousand residents of a Belgrade neighborhood without electricity, which indicates that the arguments of the interlocutors in the text are not unfounded, but based on real threats that exist.

3. The lawsuit or legal remedy, that is, the request or proposal submitted by the plaintiff is disproportionate, excessive or unreasonable.

The prosecutor refers to the criminal offense of “causing panic and disorder”. If the crime was committed through the means of public information, a prison sentence of 6 months to 5 years is foreseen. If journalists were to be sentenced to prison for covering a topic of public interest, it would be a precedent and the final step in stifling media freedom.

4. The lawsuit was filed against (i) an individual, i.e. a responsible media editor and/or a journalist and not (only) against an organization that organized the disputed activity, i.e. a media publisher and/or a journalist who published the news within a public debate.

The lawsuit was filed against several persons: the director of the weekly “Radar”, the editor of this media, as well as the author of the text.

5. The plaintiff, or persons related to the plaintiff, in the previous period were or are now participants in multiple and coordinated filing of lawsuits against actors participating in the public debate.

The former director of “Elektromreža Srbije”, Nikola Petrović, filed several lawsuits against investigative journalists and portals.

6. The prosecutor did not initiate out-of-court mechanisms for resolving the disputed matter before filing the lawsuit, or the prosecutor, as a holder of public authority, did not issue a warning or admonishment to the defendant but immediately filed the lawsuit.

It is not known that the prosecutor tried to resolve the disputed issue through extrajudicial mechanisms.