The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection has fined the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office of Belgrade for failure to comply with the Commissioner’s orders in three cases in which freedom of information requests had been submitted in connection with the “Savamala” case. The freedom of information requests related to the professional resume of the case prosecutor; information on whether criminal charges had been brought against the persons who failed to comply with the prosecutor’s requests during the investigation; and information whether disciplinary action had been taken against those persons and, if so, the reference numbers of the documents by which such disciplinary action had been initiated.
Although the Commissioner’s decisions are final, binding and enforceable under the law, the Higher Prosecutor’s Office has not complied with this decision.
Instead of complying with the decision, the Higher Prosecutor’s Office informed the Commissioner it had forwarded the entire case file to the Appellate Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade. As this is not a procedural act provided for in the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance, it would appear that the Higher Prosecutor’s Office is attempting to “establish” a new mechanism, one that is not available under the existing legal order, to thwart the public’s rights, while in fact committing a punishable offence under Article 46 item 14 of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance.
The Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office subsequently notified the Commissioner it had filed a petition with the Republic Public Prosecutor’s Office to seek annulment of the Commissioner’s Decision by filing action with the Administrative Court.
While the Republic Public Prosecutor’s Office could have filed and indeed can still file such action with the Administrative Court (if it can come up with any reasonable justification for doing so), even that would not have been a reason for non-compliance with a final, enforceable and binding decision. Only the court hearing the case is authorised under the law to pass a potential decision to stay the execution.
Violation of the law by any public authority is always a reason for concern, even more so when this is done by an authority such as the public prosecutor’s office, whose remit includes “protecting legality” as one of its primary functions. And in the specific case of “Savamala”, which has, quite understandably, garnered much public attention, both in Serbia and internationally, and which is already acrimonious enough as it is, denying public access to information which is quite obviously a legitimate object of public interest and the disclosure of which cannot jeopardise any legitimate interests just adds another undesirable aspect to an already complex issue.
