Personnel Uncertainties

It seemed as though all conspired against Nenad Djorjdevic, one of the founders of the Yugoslav United Left (JUL) and a well known Belgrade businessman, and his enjoyment. At the coast, in Budva, in an apartment of his very own luxurious hotel Admiral, he was presented with the news that the Supreme Court of Serbia had handed its ruling by which his prison sentence has been doubled from two to four years. To make things even more serious, word is of an executive ruling, meaning that his lawyers can only ask for so-called extraordinary legal remedies, i.e. to prove that the Supreme Court, while handing down its ruling, had violated the law. And while Djordjevic, talking to Belgrade's weekly Svedok claims that he was "framed", his lawyer Zoran Cetkovic says for VREME that he has not given up hope, although he does not dispute that the entire case is politically motivated.

"Djordjevic has been in Budva the entire time, that's where he transferred his business dealings as well, it isn't true that he ran away to Italy", says Cetkovic. Djordjevic himself claims that he has no reason to run, that he is where his family is, even though he is, as he says, aware that he is a victim of some "powerful peoples'" revenge. And they, allegedly, are seeking their revenge because he stepped out of JUL. Otherwise, his former lawyer Dragoslav Cetkovic says for VREME that he withdrew from the case due to politics, reminding that Djordjevic, while he was held in detention, was not visited by a single party colleague, not even once.

According to the interpretations of lawyers and legal experts, the Djordjevic "case" is nearing its closure. In the next two weeks his lawyers will have to "clutch" at the aforementioned extraordinary remedy and demand proof of a violation of law in these proceedings. At the same time, Djordjevic could receive orders from Belgrade's Third Municipal Court, stated in legal terms, to report and start serving his sentence, or in simple words - to go to jail.

"To tell you the truth, I wouldn't be surprised if those orders to report and start serving his sentence had already arrived. However, they're not naïve either, they're trying to go about this in a sophisticated manner, to appear as though they respect law and procedures. It is customary for more than a month to elapse from the moment when the ruling is handed down to when that person is sent to jail", says Djordjevic's former lawyer.

Therefore, the Supreme Court of Serbia has, a couple of days ago, altered a previous ruling of the District Court in Belgrade which had sentenced Djordjevic, a former director of the Bureau of Health Insurance of Serbia, to two years in jail due to concluding a harmful contract with the CIT firm from Liechtenstein. The plaintiff accused Djordjevic of plundering over five million US dollars for both himself and the owner of the CIT company Avram Adidzes (on the run) by abusing his official position and thereby damaging the Bureau. That indictment stated that Djordjevic, without the Bureau's backing, which he was at that time heading, had ordered computer equipment to be imported from abroad. However, during the trial,  it was not proven that Djordjevic had abused his official position nor that he had acquired illegal benefits, yet it was ascertained that he had concluded a damaging contract and that he had transferred the Bureau's funds to the CIT company account. Djordjevic, in the weekly Svedok, announced that he will come out in public with the names of the people "who had benefited by the chaotic activities in the Health Insurance Fund", a practice which changed with the introduction of the computer system. Announcements like this were made before however Djordjevic never carried them out.

In future court proceedings, Djordjevic, via his lawyers, must address the public prosecutor directly and ask him for redemption, even though the prison term has been doubled following an appeal made by that very same public prosecutor. "That is a legal absurdity - the one who appeals is the one who sentences you too. What we have here are traces of the one party system", says Djordjevic's former lawyer Dragoslav Cetkovic. One of his current lawyers Slobodan Milivojevic claims that Djordjevic is innocent, that in the previous court proceedings it was ascertained that not only had he not obtained illegal financial benefits but that he had also not damaged the Fund. That, claims Milivojevic, was proven by the findings of the court experts.

Circles close to the businessmen from the ranks of the ruling parties say that one cannot exclude that politics, owing to which Djordjevic, once a grocery store owner, became the owner of a business empire, are now hindering his situation. JUL is, as these sources claim, well known for the fact that it provides its members with a lot but demads a lot in return as well. It is no secret that even companies belonging to ministers are not spared visits by the financial police. However, not because the financial police wishes to ascertain certain irregularities and punish them, but because the parties they belong to could keep them under their thumbs in case they become disobedient, as happened with Djordjevic.

As far as Djordjevic himself is concerned, word is of a man who has done more than his share for his party. He had, namely, at the time when JUL was being founded, and under extremely favorable circumstances, bought himself a villa in Belgrade's Djure Djakovica St. and donated it to his party. The JUL headquarters are situated in that very building to this day, and to make the irony even greater, the police had initially arrested Djordjevic directly in front of that building. And that at the moment when, or so it seemed, he was at the height of power - one of the leading men in the party, a rich businessman who had a knack for successful business dealings, on top of that a man with a state function of director of the Health Fund. The position of Dojcilo Maslovaric, the now former Yugoslav ambassador to Vatican as well as that of Dragan Cicic, another rich businessman, seemed identical, at least to those less informed, and both of them, with a single move, were thrown out of the leadership of the Left.