Ilija Dević Acquitted for Tax Evasion
After ten years of trials, one of the most serious charges which meant
beginning of the attacks against and my property fell. In the judgement made
by the Basic Court in Novi Sad the suspicion regarding possible tax evasion
was rejected. It was done in such a way that it was only last year that, in
spite of the Prosecution which had initiated the charges opposition, the
Court accepted the original documentation provided by the Tax Administration
which obviously showed that I had been in fiscal overpayment at the moment
of the charges initiation.
"The net" began to be constructed in late 2006 when well devised investment
ATP Vojvodina was about to be completed. The attack was organized by the
powerful people supported by the previous state security members who were
taking part in protection and money laundering of narco and tobacco mafia on
the territory of Vojvodina. The group consists of around thirty people who
in that time but nowadays as well have been managing the police,
prosecution, judiciary and institutions in Vojvodina. They estimated that my
assets should be taken away from me claiming: "He cannot make money in Novi
Sad when we are there." The person the group can rely on in judiciary is
Đorđe Ostojić and Aleksandar Divljak, the clerk in Credit Agricole Bank.
The most important point here is that the money I brought to Novi Sad is of
well-known origin, earned during the period of thirty years of my being a
successful entrepreneur. When I was finishing the investment in late 2006,
the instructed people from the Novi Sad Internal Affairs Secretariat
suddenly appeared. Aleksandar Petković, Neško Nešković and others were led
by Bogdan Pušić. They took the documentation from the company, they
controlled everything but they did not manage to find anything illegal. The
financial police arrived after them, and they also did not find anything
illegal. Then they got the idea to transfer me from the centre for the big
tax payers into Novi Sad centre "so that they could mangle me". They really
did that and the complaint I filed based on the overpayment was rejected.
Although I was the Director General and majority owner, I granted
authorization to the Financial Director at the Basic Court in Novi Sad to
manage the entire financial and general sectors and to have the right to
sign the tax declaration. She really was doing that while I was exclusively
dealing with the strategic matters in the company.
ATP Vojvodina had a regularly registered and recorded tax and as a big tax
payer in investment was paying its fiscal obligations in accordance with the
law. It had big tax credits due to VAT payment which the company was
reposting to the tax on the salaries and contributions and it from time to
time demanded giving back the means earned through VAT. ATP Vojvodina
officials regularly met and made the agreements with the Tax Administration
management because of the difficulties in doing the business since the City
of Novi Sad failed to comply with the signed contract. The Tax
Administration even took the ATP Vojvodina property pledge so that they
could secure their demands which, among other things, clearly shows that
there were not any intentions to avoid or evade the obligation.
In the beginning of the year 2007, after completion of the investment and
obtaining the use permit, I informed the City Administration that I had
complied with the contractual obligation (
link) and demanded from the City of Novi Sad to comply with their part of the
contract. That was the moment when all the inspections, including the tax
one, attacked the company and me personally. In the beginning of June 2007
I filed the damage compensation demand because of contempt of contract
concluded with the City of Novi Sad.
Immediately after that I was invited to the meeting with Ratko Buturović at
the Park hotel. I was told that the lawyer Dragan Gojković, Maja Gojković' s
brother, would come there as well. He was late; we were waiting for him for
two hours because, as he explained, he had had meetings with the client
Antun Stanaj. Buturović and Gojković demanded the amount of 2,5 million
Euros so that my investment could start working. I did not accept their
offer, I said goodbye to them and left the meeting.
In the beginning of 2007 Buturović called me and said that there was a tax
policeman in my company. The tax policeman was Šljukić. In late September
2007 he filed an incorrectly made official note to the police - to the
famous department where Bogdan Pušić, Neško Nešković and Alelksandar
Petković worked. They forwarded the note to the Basic Prosecution in Novi
Sad which was also composed of some interesting people - Bata Protić, later
expelled from the Prosecution because of his cooperation with the narco and
tobacco mafia, Ksena Bašić - wife of one of the Bašić brothers accused of
collaboration with the narco and tobacco mafia as well as Vladana Todorić -
a person in friendly-godfather connections with Đorđe Ostojić who received
the police note so that an indictment could be raised against me. She raised
the indictment based on the Šljukić's notes but she did not determine that I
was still the tax payer in Belgrade centre in the time of the indictment
raising. It means that the Prosecution in Novi Sad did not have jurisdiction
in the case. In order to support the indictment, she engaged the court
expert Miljka Otorinov who was generally the one engaged for the dirty
activities of the abovementioned persons. Based on the invented data, she
provided the results which "found out" the unpaid taxes and contributions in
the amount of 137 million dinars and she charged that on me. The lawyers
engaged another court expert who found out that I had overpaid. However, the
judge Miroljub Novićević rejected that, he did not allow giving of the
evidence, bringing of the witnesses; he even did not let taking of the data
from the Tax Administration cards, he did not allow providing of the tax
registrations and he did not allow defining of identity of the person who
had signed them. Instead, he sentenced me to 14 months in prison.
The Court of Appeal in Novi Sad to which I filed the complaint returned the
case to a new trial. Till the end of 2015 the prosecutor Vladana Todorić
used to say various lies, thus showing her lack of elementary knowledge
about the tax issues and mathematics. She was behaving as if conducting a
personal lawsuit against me, and she did not find out that there was no
intent there! In the end we demanded providing of the tax cards which showed
that I had not been the General Director during the entire period of the
litigations. We also got the tax registrations where there was not my
signature so the judge made the acquittal judgement on 18 June 2018.
This procedure has caused enormous expenses to the budget during its
ten-year lasting. It has also raised the question if that is what the
prosecutors serve for or if they should maybe deal with those who
transferred their state jobs into private areas. The intention of the whole
procedure was to provide conditions for the abovementioned group supported
by the Credit Agricole Bank's banker, Aleksandar Divljak, to compromise me,
arrest me and take away my investment and assets.