Why does the City of Novi Sad hide the consent given by the Attorney General on the controversial contract?

How is it possible that the City of Novi Sad constantly replied to the Anti-corruption agency that the contract was in power?

If the Attorny General did not give its consent, why did they fail to say immediately that the contract was null and void?

If the contract is not valid, who is to be blamed for that?

The authorities still cannot accept the fact that ignoring of the contractual obligations by the City of Novi Sad has inflicted damage to ATP Vojvodina company and me as the investor. The amount of the damage calculated so far ecxeeds hundreds of millions Euros. Instead of finding the way to settle the obligations and solve the problems caused in that way, the authorities are still trying to take away that property through the judiciary and probably give it as a gift to the tycoons they are close to.

The latest method in that activity is spreading the thesis that the basic contract I signed with the City about building of the international bus station and service center compund is null and void and in their opinion I do not have right to get the damage compensation. They are trying to find the foundation for that in one, otherwise controversial opinion of the Supreme Court of Cassation stated in the revision of the judgement, by which the right of ATP Vojvodina to get compensation due to non-initiating part of the investment of the bus station for the period from December 2011was defined. That opinion, given within record 24 hours, „found out“ even without expertise, that the company was not to get 12 million Euros but only 4 million Euros. On the occasion of such an interpretation of the contract, even EU sharply reacted, and the Anti-corruption Agency pointed to the process irregularities. There was no reply from the SCC to the objections.

In the meantime, both ATP Vojvodina and I filed lawsuit for damage compensation on all the basis relating the following period till the end of the year 2016 and, as far as all these cases are concerned, there is an obvious wish to aplly the unfounded opinion of the SCC. I want to point out that a court judgement cannot be the source of law, especially not for the period it did not cover, nor for the case of the entire damage which was not considered by the SCC or any other court. Besides, I could not influence upon its contents because the text was created by the City as a realization in accordance with the General Urban Plan, and the City Public Attorney General Office was in charge of its legality and they gave the consent. The level of the problems that institution is facing now can be seen in the fact that, from the beginning of ten years lasting trial, people working with the institution have tried to persude everybody that the contractual obligations were fulfilled, although the traffic has never been redirected towards the site of the newly built compound in spite of the fact that it had been planned to be, and now they are trying to spread the thesis about its being null and void. Just in case, they use both options in some documents.

The principal question now is: what kind of message is sent to other, primarily domestic investors, by this contestation? Did the City pulled me into this investment deliberately so that they could take it away later on? What is the level of protection that the domestic investors have in relation to the ones from abroad? If I had built everything as, for example, citizen of the Netherlands, I would have been protected in accordance with the interstate agreement by which any party is forbidden from taking some discrimination measures towards co-counterparty in order to disturb their work and managing the investments, because for breaking of these provisions I could have addressed the International Arbitration in Washington. However, as a domestic investor, I do not have such a possibility, although the Law and the Constitution guarantee equal positions for both domestic and foreign businessmen. On the contrary, the judiciary generally stays silent when my right is concerned, and that can be confirmed by their lack of acting in relation with numerous criminal charges I have filed. As far as I know, the latest one is the denunciation filed by the Anti-corruption Agency against the female acting judge from the Higher Court in Novi Sad who first demanded engagement of the Faculties of Mechanical Engineering and Transport in the expertise and then, when the determined amount of the damaged reached 132 million Euros, tried to ignore their results.

I have been a businessman since 1974 and I have earned my funds by my own work but not from the thieving privatizations. It is generally known that I invested 30 million Euros into ATP Vojvodina company, along with the already existing 300, that I employed another 200 workers and, after completion of the second phase, total number of the employees would have been 1,200. Although this is the biggest domestic investment, the state has not given my any subsidiary which is given to foreign investors. On the contrary, the City has inflicted damage to me because they did not fulfill their non-cash part of the contract and for that reason neither the bus station nor the service could work. Under pressure of the credit installments, the company with 500 employees bankrupted.

I have already informed the European Commission, European Parliament, Anti-corruption Agency, Anti-corruption Council, The Republic Prosecution and others about the entire situation.

Yours sincerely,

ILIJA DEVIĆ , INVESTOR OF ATP VOJVODINA COMPANY