Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic on Sunday dismissed an article in Vecernji List newspaper which said that police had been illegally monitoring telephone calls by secret service agents and executives of the Agrokor food company, insisting that police did not abuse their powers.
"Based on an analysis of all reports from the police and all the information that has been presented to me, and having examined records of what the police were doing, I have seen for myself that there were no irregularities, and I completely reject all allegations published by Vecernji List," Ostojic told a press conference.
"As minister responsible for the coordination of the security system and as president of the council for the coordination of the security and intelligence system, I do not receive reports from the head of the Office of the National Security Council, so I am not familiar with the alleged inspection report mentioned by Vecernji List," he said, stressing that he fully supported legal police work.
Ostojic said he could not issue any orders for surveillance, because he as minister did not issue such orders "especially not political orders". He explained that orders for criminal investigation were issued by the Chief Public Prosecutor's Office (DORH) and that no such action could be taken without DORH's permission.
He said that only 24 police officers, led by the chief of the Crime Investigation Department, currently had the authority to request a printout of telephone calls for a particular person, while surveillance and suspected abuse of powers fell within the authority of the parliamentary Committee on Home Affairs and National Security.
"I am confident that collections of requested printouts exist and are properly treated as data collections, and there is no possibility of any order being erased," the minister said.
When asked if he knew who was behind all this, Ostojic said he did not, but added that it would be investigated how classified documents came to be made public.
"No media campaign, whoever it comes from, will stop the minister or police officers in applying their powers in accordance with the law, whoever it may be," Ostojic said, underlining that police should not be prevented from investigating the gravest forms of crime and fighting organised crime. "No one can stop them doing that," he stressed.
Vecernji List ran an article on Sunday claiming that the police, acting under the political leadership of Minister Ostojic, had abused the system of covert gathering of information and spied on several senior officials of the Security and Intelligence Agency (SOA) and several top executives of the Agrokor food company.
The newspaper claims that the abuse was discovered only recently, in an inspection of the secret services and the Telecommunications Monitoring Centre conducted by the Office of the National Security Council. The inspection revealed that police officers from the Office for the Prevention of Organised Crime and Corruption (USKOK) had abused their powers by adding telephone numbers for SOA officials and Agrokor executives to requests for printouts of telephone calls for persons under criminal investigation.
