{"id":36918,"date":"2023-12-04T11:19:09","date_gmt":"2023-12-04T09:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/?p=36918"},"modified":"2023-12-11T11:27:18","modified_gmt":"2023-12-11T09:27:18","slug":"criminal-complaint-filed-following-cinss-call-center-article","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/criminal-complaint-filed-following-cinss-call-center-article\/","title":{"rendered":"Criminal Complaint Filed Following CINS\u2019s Call Center Article"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The complaint was submitted to the <em>First Basic Public Prosecutor&#8217;s Office<\/em> <em>in Belgrade<\/em> against <strong>Milena<\/strong> and <strong>Jelena Markovi\u0107<\/strong>, twins who run the hostess agency <em>M&amp;J Lady,<\/em> <strong>Milo\u0161 Vu\u010devi\u0107<\/strong> as the legal representative of SNS, as well as <strong>Stefan Mili\u0107<\/strong> and <strong>Ognjen Ko\u010devi\u0107<\/strong> from the association CEROB, where daily wages are paid out.<\/p><p>In addition to them, a criminal complaint was also filed against unknown persons from the <em>Ministry of State Administration and Local Self-Government<\/em>, as well as an unspecified number of municipal and city administrations, that is, against those responsible for updating the voter list.<\/p><p>All of them, according to the criminal complaint, which journalists of the <em>Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia<\/em> (CINS) had access to, are suspected of having damaged the state budget in the amount of millions and committed (in complicity) the following criminal offenses:<\/p><ul><li><strong>unauthorized collection of personal data (<\/strong>personal data of citizens were collected and processed at the call center without their consent)<\/li><li><strong>violation of equality<\/strong> (the condition for working at the call center was to vote for the <em>Serbian Progressive Party<\/em>)<\/li><li><strong>avoidance of withholding tax<\/strong> (daily wages for working at the call center were paid cash-in-hand)<\/li><li><strong>giving and accepting bribes in connection with voting, colloquially known as &#8220;vote buying&#8221;<\/strong> (a condition for working at a call center on election day is to vote for SNS and to take a photo of the ballot)<\/li><\/ul><p><strong>Pavi\u0107evi\u0107<\/strong> told CINS that they don&#8217;t expect the complaint to yield any results, at least until the election, but that they want it to be documented who did what during the election process.<\/p><p>The complaint lists CINS\u2019s article as a source of information, and it has been suggested to the prosecution to have our journalist, who was briefly part of this system, be a witness in the case.<\/p><div class=\"row  irelated\"><div class=\"col-md-12 \"><div class=\"line\"><\/div><\/div><div class=\"col-md-12 \"><div class=\"irelatedhead\">Na istu temu:<\/div><\/div><div class=\"col-md-12 \"><div class=\"irelatedposts\"><div class=\"row irelatedpost\"><div class=\"col-md-4\" >\n            \t\t\t\t<div class=\"irelatedimg\" style=\"background-image:url('https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/Call-centar-desktop-1-576x432.jpeg');\"  >\n            \t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"irelatedimgarrow d-sm-block d-md-none\" ><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"nolightbox\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/wp-content\/plugins\/xo-tinymce\/tinyrelated\/img\/arrow.svg\"><\/div>\n            \t\t\t\t<\/div>\n            \t\t\t<\/div><div class=\"col-md-8  irelatedcont \"><div class=\" irelatedconttitle\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/cins-inside-snss-call-center-hostess-agency-vote-buying-and-millions-in-cash\/\" target=\"_blank\" >CINS Inside SNS\u2019s Call Center: Hostess Agency, Vote Buying, and Millions in Cash<\/a><div class=\"irelatedcontarrow d-none d-md-block\" ><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"nolightbox\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/wp-content\/plugins\/xo-tinymce\/tinyrelated\/img\/arrow.svg\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><div class=\"col-md-12 \"><div class=\"line \"><\/div><\/div><\/div><p>As a reminder, after the article was published, the <em>Higher Public Prosecutor&#8217;s Office<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/higher-public-prosecutors-office-on-cinss-investigation-were-waiting-on-election-commissions\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">said<\/a> that it was waiting on election commissions to potentially identify irregularities and inform them about it. On the other hand, deputy member of the <em>City Election Commission<\/em> <strong>Vladica Ili\u0107<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/deputy-gik-member-it-is-not-the-job-of-election-commissions-to-establish-facts-regarding-sns-s-call-center\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">said<\/a> that electoral commissions do not have the authority to investigate this case, and that the prosecution and <em>Tax Inspectorate<\/em> should react.<\/p><p>&#8220;Under normal circumstances and in a country where the prosecutor&#8217;s office actually does its job, it would have already checked what is underneath the surface instead of waiting for us to do it all,&#8221; Ili\u0107 told CINS.<\/p><p>In addition, <strong>Nemanja Nenadi\u0107<\/strong> from <em>Transparency Serbia<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/nenadic-cins-article-is-reason-enough-for-the-prosecution-to-launch-an-investigation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">believes<\/a> that our article is reason enough for the prosecution to launch an investigation.<\/p><p>CINS published an article last week revealing how the <em>Serbian Progressive Party\u2019s<\/em> call center near the <em>Port of Belgrade<\/em> operates. More than 100 people call citizens every day and ask them if they will vote for this party in the upcoming elections.<\/p><p>CINS\u2019s journalist was briefly part of this group and was offered what we colloquially call &#8220;vote buying&#8221; on two occasions. In addition, our investigation also pointed to potential abuses when it comes to personal data protection.<\/p><p>Click here to read more about the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/tag\/snss-call-center\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reactions<\/a> of relevant institutions, as well as Serbia\u2019s President <strong>Aleksandar Vu\u010di\u0107<\/strong>.<\/p><div class=\"rmbox\"><div class=\"rmboxteaser\"><p>Thank you for reposting CINS articles! When doing so, you need to state that you have taken the <strong>story over from the Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia, and provide a link to the article you are reposting.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<p><strong>More information at: <a href='\/en\/terms-of-use\/' target='_blank' rel='noopener'>cins.rs\/en\/terms-of-use<\/a><\/strong><\/p><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After CINS revealed how the Serbian Progressive Party\u2019s call center operates, raising suspicions of possible vote buying and misuse of citizens&#8217; personal data, MP candidates from the &#8220;Serbia against violence&#8221; coalition Jelena Jerini\u0107 and \u0110or\u0111e Pavi\u0107evi\u0107 filed criminal complaints against those responsible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1120,"featured_media":36920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1604,1497,1573],"tags":[1921,1937,1611,2197],"class_list":["post-36918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hp-slider","category-news","category-political-parties","tag-election-campaign","tag-elections","tag-serbian-progressive-party","tag-snss-call-center","ciTrackContent"],"acf":[],"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Conversation-on-22vote-buying22-with-CINSs-journalist.jpeg","author_additional":[1378],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36918"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36934,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36918\/revisions\/36934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}