Mijajlović: There was not a single lie in any of the 66 articles, what is wrong with journalists publishing something once they learn about it?

The indictment includes 66 newspaper articles. I asked the lawyers to make copies of them for me, and not a single person was insulted in any of them, not a single lie was told, and no one was distressed by any of the information. If we are journalists and I found out that someone had done something and that someone was trying to steal from the state, and we published that, I ask: what is wrong with that? I asked for the personal identification number of Aleksa Bečić’s mother because the media had previously written about that person. It would have been foolish not to check whether the woman was building residential properties together with people from a criminal organization - businessman Aleksandar Mijajlović said today at the High Court during the review of the corrected indictment.

He stood by the statements he made at the previous hearing, in which he categorically denied forming a criminal organization whose alleged members included senior state prosecutor Andrijana Nastić, Head of the Podgorica Security Centre Milovan Pavićević, politician Predrag Bošković, and police officers Drago Spičanović and Vladan Lazović.

In his statement, Mijajlović said he had had time to read the 258-page indictment in detail, „page by page“.

- I managed to find that I communicated with the others via WhatsApp and Viber. That is actually not news, because none of the defendants denied it. The sentence stating that I had received material and non-material benefit has disappeared from the original indictment; instead, I was privileged, as a private individual, to receive certain information - Mijajlović said.

He added that he had asked Spičanović who owned a particular vehicle. Since, as he said, he knew the owner of a beauty salon, he asked whether she would also be here with them today if he had called her rather than Spičanović.

- I would ask everyone present whether they are certain there is not a single person in the world about whom they know something that person does not know they know. If this were investigated, the entire world population would end up in the dock - Mijajlović said.

Andrijana Nastić said she stood by her previous statement.

- Given this panel, your knowledge of the law, as well as the decision you have issued, gives me reason to believe that you will reject the charges brought by the Special State Prosecutor’s Office and terminate the proceedings already at this stage - Nastić said in a brief statement.

As a reminder, the review of the corrected indictment against Mijajlović had been scheduled for July 31, but prosecutor Jovan Vukotić, on his own behalf and on behalf of his colleagues Ivana Petrušić-Vukašević and Miroslav Turković, requested that judges Zoran Radović and Boris Savić and Judge Vesna Kovačević be recused, saying that he had doubts about their impartiality.

The Court of Appeals rejected the request as unfounded, and the indictment was scheduled to be reviewed again on August 10 at 9 a.m.

Mijajlović is accused of allegedly forming the group by using Montenegrin media outlets – M Portal, TV E, as well as the portals CdM, Standard, Portal Analitika, Antena M and the daily Pobjeda - in order to „shape public opinion and create a media image exclusively for the purpose of suppressing competition“.

Montenegrin legislation, just like European legislation, does not recognize „influence over the media“ as a criminal offence. Nor is there a criminal offence of „creating public opinion“.

According to the factual description of the indictment published by Portal ETV, it does not contain a single activity by Mijajlović that would constitute an act of recruiting the other defendants. Such an act implies persuading a person, making a promise or offering a material benefit, accompanied by an explanation that undertaking a particular activity would prevent some harm or adverse consequence. It is not stated when or how Mijajlović allegedly recruited members of the criminal organization, what exact instructions and directions he allegedly gave them, or how he assigned them their respective roles and tasks. These are details from the reasoning explaining why the panel presided over by Judge Radović, with Judge Kovačević and Judge Savić as members, returned the indictment against Mijajlović and five other people to the Special State Prosecutor’s Office for correction.

The defendants’ lawyers requested that the proceedings be terminated, while Special Prosecutor Miroslav Turković maintained that the indictment was based on evidence and that „this criminal-law matter should be decided in adversarial proceedings“.