The list of suspects in the “General Staff” investigation has been expanded to include the acting Secretary in the Ministry of Culture, Slavica Jelača, whom the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime (TOK) suspects of the prolonged criminal offense of abuse of official position as a co-perpetrator, as reported by Insajder.
Jelača, who was appointed as the acting Secretary of the Ministry of Culture last year, was first questioned in the “General Staff” investigation in early September, in the capacity of a witness.
She was questioned again this week, but this time as a suspect, and the interrogation lasted for two days.
Jelača, who was questioned without a lawyer in September, appeared at the Prosecutor’s Office this time with her defense counsel, lawyer Vladimir Đukanović.
According to Insajder‘s findings, during the interrogation, Jelača confirmed that, together with those previously suspected in the investigation—namely the directors of the Republic and Belgrade Institutes for the Protection of Cultural Monuments—she undertook actions involving the unauthorized preparation of documentation. This documentation was the basis on which the Government of Serbia adopted the decision on November 14 last year to terminate the cultural property status of the Serbian Army General Staff and Ministry of Defense buildings in Belgrade.
Before Jelača, the suspected Institute directors, Goran Vasić and Aleksandar Ivanović, had also admitted to the actions they are charged with, as announced by the TOK. This involves falsifying documentation on the basis of which they submitted an Initiative to the Ministry of Culture for the adoption of the decision to terminate the cultural property status for the General Staff buildings.
Specifically, Vasić falsely represented that the Initiative for the General Staff was registered in the Institute’s electronic registry, while on the other hand, he submitted the Initiative without the obligatory conservator’s study.
As established so far in the investigation, there was also no legally required public announcement of the proposed Initiative.
Despite these deficiencies, the Ministry of Culture then sent the Republic Institute’s documentation to the Government in the form of a Proposal, which made the decision in November 2024.
Behind all this was an agreement by the authorities to sell the two General Staff buildings in the center of Belgrade to a company belonging to Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump, who planned to build a hotel and a business-residential complex with two towers on the plots in Kneza Miloša Street in the center of Belgrade.
In the meantime, Goran Vasić, the first suspect in the investigation, has been returned to the position of director of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments.
The Government’s decision to terminate the cultural property status of the General Staff buildings was published in the Official Gazette eight days after its adoption, but it has not been implemented.
Source: Insajder, Photo: ATA Images