Minister of Culture Nikola Selakovi\u0107 arrived at the trial in the building of the Special Court on Ustani\u010dka Street accompanied by the defendant Slavica Jela\u010da, a secretary at the Ministry of Culture, and Goran Vasi\u0107, acting director of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments. As a reminder, both Jela\u010da and Vasi\u0107 identified Minister Selakovi\u0107 as the person on whose orders they acted during the procedure of removing cultural heritage protection from the \u201cGeneral\u0161tab\u201d building complex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Selakovi\u0107 is accused that, in the period from the second half of May until the end of November 2024, together with Slavica Jela\u010da, Goran Vasi\u0107, and Aleksandar Ivanovi\u0107, acting director of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of the City of Belgrade, exceeded the limits of his official authority and knowingly participated in a procedure that, according to the prosecution, caused serious damage to Serbia\u2019s cultural heritage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although they were legally obliged to protect cultural assets, the defendants, according to the indictment proposal, undertook actions aimed at revoking the protected status of the General Staff buildings, knowing that the legal conditions for such a decision had not been met.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In that process, as Goran Vasi\u0107 previously stated during questioning at the prosecutor\u2019s office, he acted on the orders of Minister of Culture Selakovi\u0107. He pleaded guilty before the prosecution, saying that he did not dispute that he himself drafted the act \u201cInitiative: proposal for adopting a decision on the termination of cultural property status,\u201d that he did not know it should be publicly announced, and that he believed he had the right to do so. He personally handed the initiative, by hand, to Slavica Jela\u010da, who initialed the copy he kept for himself in the upper right corner of the document and, as he stated, he mistakenly took it to his apartment, where the police found it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the other hand, Jela\u010da, according to the indictment proposal, upon the order of Minister Selakovi\u0107, took over further actions, even though she was not competent for these cases. Without authorization and professional basis, she drafted proposals for government decisions and included in the explanations information that did not correspond to the factual situation, stating that the competent institutes had submitted reasoned proposals, although that was not the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the period from July 10 to July 17, 2024, Jela\u010da prepared correspondence from the Ministry of Culture to other state institutions, and all of those documents were signed by Minister Nikola Selakovi\u0107 using a facsimile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n