WHO ARE ŠOLAK’S PEOPLE United Group media pressure the Council to make the Telekom report as unfavourable as possible
The Anti-Corruption Council reports are not legally binding, but United Group wants the report to be as unfavourable as possible, through their TV stations N1 and Nova S, as well as their portals. Will the Council resist the pressure or give in?
The media owned by Dragan Šolak’s United Group have started to put increasing pressure on the Anti-Corruption Council to draw up an unfavourable report on Telekom Srbija’s business operations. This would give them an alibi and a justification for the dirty campaign that they have been conducting for months against Telekom, Kurir, and Wireless Media.
Although the Council’s reports are not legally binding, United Group’s media – above all N1 and Nova S – are trying their best to make sure the report is adopted as if it were the Holy Scriptures. What is behind all this is their attempt to justify their attacks against Telekom and their unprofessional reporting on the operation of this domestic company. This is why a question can be raised here whether the Council will manage to resist this pressure or give in to it. Furthermore, another question can be posed regarding who will be accountable and who to bring charges against for the damage that these companies have incurred if the report is different from what has been announced by United Group’s media.
Crossfire
As the biggest domestic telecommunications company, Telekom has recently found itself in the crossfire of Šolak’s TV stations N1 and Nova S, as well as their portals. A small number of interlocutors wholeheartedly help them in this task, and a member of the Anti-Corruption Council, Jelisaveta Vasilić, is nearly always among them. She is openly suspected to have a conflict of interests, given the fact that her daughter is employed at Nova S television station. After an unsuccessful attempt to push her report on Telekom’s business operations through the Council, Vasilić has now drawn up her personal view on the collaboration between Telekom and the company Wireless Media. United Group’s media machinery was set in motion in order for this opinion of hers to be forcibly turned into an official stance of the entire Council, which is at best inappropriate.
Pushing its own interests to the fore, United Group twists and masks facts in its media campaign against the competitors, even persistently describing the contract between Telekom and Wireless Media as ‘fictitious’. N1 and Nova S deliberately pass over the crimes committed by their accomplices and associates, withholding a crucial piece of information from the public: the published elements of the contract between Telekom and Wireless Media were obtained illegally – the contract was practically stolen! United Group has in this way trampled upon the basic principles of business culture and illegally announced to the entire public the business strategy and market-sensitive information on its competitors.
Clearing the ground
By calculated attacks against Telekom and labelling it as concluding ‘fictitious’ contracts with Wireless Media, United Group’s media grossly discredit the standing and professional reputation of these companies. Under the guise of caring for the public interest and under the banner of free and professional journalism, they are clearing the ground for their bosses, in order to make Šolak and Đilas’s political and business alliance as lucrative as possible.
Lawyers Nemanja Govedarica and Dejan Dobrosavljević think that this contract cannot be termed fictitious if it regulates the rights and duties of the two parties which have signed it:
‘Fictitious contracts are usually used to hide something or conceal certain facts. However, if it is a contractual relationship between two parties, which defines the mutual duties and rights, including the terms of termination in the event that the agreed obligations are not fulfilled, there is no reason to call it a fictitious contract,’ Govedarica explains.
His colleague Dejan Dobrosavljević, a former judge, thinks it is an ordinary contract between two companies:
‘It is a classic business contract, concluded between companies across the world. It is unclear to me why anyone would call it fictitious,’ Dobrosavljević says.
Despite the fact that the contract has both contracting parties’ signatures, and that it contains a fair and balanced agreement benefitting both contracting parties, Šolak’s media keep sneaking in their own ‘truth’.
Đilas’s lawyer
It is telling that the main actor of the majority of the stories run on N1 and Nova S is Vladimir Todorić, the lawyer of the Party of Freedom and Justice leader Dragan Đilas. Economic, financial, and legal experts see no problem in this arrangement, and the only one attacking the abovementioned domestic company’s contracts is Todorić. The energy that Todorić puts into defending United Group’s interests and disparaging Telekom’s business successes provides further confirmation of the actual facts – that Šolak and Đilas have a political as well as a lucrative business deal, which was the focus of Kurir’s comprehensive investigation in the previous period. We have demonstrated how nearly all of Đilas’s business has passed into Šolak’s hands. All these business machinations were carried out in an entirely non-transparent fashion, embedded as they were in an entangled network of associated companies and entities in offshore zones, and hidden behind front companies, with the aim of masking the business ties of this duo.
It will be interesting to see how much the Council view on this case will be similar to the views that Todorić put forward in the previous period.
Kurir.rs/ Redakcija Kurira Foto: Screenshot NEM