The Minister of Finance acted according to the decision of the Administrative Court: There are no exceptions, Perović wanted to delay the procedure

Minister of Finance Novica Vuković yesterday he again refused the request Jelena Perović for the exemption of female inspectors of the Directorate for Budget Inspection who controlled the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption.

Vuković did this after the Administrative Court annulled the Ministry's decision of April 15, which ordered Director Perović to eliminate irregularities and revoke her decision that she deserved variable and overtime compensation in March as well.

Perović has been under house arrest since April 19, and the Special State Prosecutor's Office suspects that she abused her position and damaged the state budget by more than 100.000 euros.

Officials of the Special Police Department (SPO) were also seizing documentation from the Agency yesterday. From that institution, they were accused of "intruding" precisely because of the decision of the Administrative Court - "which apparently the Minister of Finance and the Chief Special Prosecutor (Vladimir Novović) understood as humiliating", looking for "publicly available documentation".

From the Supreme State Prosecutor's Office, which he heads Milorad Marković, responded that the Agency's claims are incorrect, that the documentation is not publicly available and that "it has absolutely nothing to do with the decision made by any other judicial body".

In yesterday's decision, the Minister of Finance emphasized that he had already decided on the requests for the exemption of female budget inspectors, which were based on the same factual situation.

"And which was submitted by the appellant (Perović) in a short period of time, namely: Minister's Decision No. 01-074/24-1886/2 of March 20 and 29, 2024, and that it is a request that has already been decided (res iudicata), which was highlighted through comments on the minutes of the inspection... The Administrative Court did not agree with the position presented in the second-instance decision. Namely, the Administrative Court is of the opinion that the Law on Administrative Procedure does not provide for the rejection of a request for exemption if it has already been decided or if the request is not explained, but the second-instance authority was obliged to react by applying the provisions of Article 15 of the Law on Administrative Procedure - prohibition of abuse of rights ", stated in yesterday's decision of Vuković.

According to the document signed by Vuković, an inspection of the case files revealed that requests for the exemption of female budget inspectors had been decided earlier.

"...That they were rejected as unfounded, and that the request in question, as well as the previous two requests, do not contain any evidence on which the existence of reasons for exemption from Article 48 of the ZUP is based, which clearly indicates the circumstance that it is an attempt to delay inspection supervision procedure by the appellant (Perović), that is, abuse of procedural rights by the appellant. Bearing in mind that the party did not submit evidence pointing to the reasons for the exemption of female budget inspectors from Art. 48 of the ZUP, as well as the fact that the public law body is obliged to prevent any abuse of the party's rights in the administrative procedure, the conditions have been met for the request to be rejected as unfounded in terms of the prohibition of the abuse of rights in the administrative procedure", the decision concluded.

The Special State Prosecutor's Office opened a criminal case after the Ministry of Finance submitted to them the results of the Agency's control related to the year 2023 - last year Perović worked as much as 310 hours of overtime, for which she signed an amount of 5.212,10 euros, and was on call also on holidays - May 22 and 23 and July 13 and 14 last year, for which she paid herself daily allowances in the amount of 536,78 euros.

She wrote herself overtime and variables, for which she received almost 13.500 euros, which, according to the finding, is contrary to the Law on Salaries of Employees in the Public Sector. She collected an additional more than 8.700 euros for work in the Working Group for determining the list of public officials.

According to the data from the minutes of the Budget Inspection, for the period from January to June last year, Perović paid the members of the former Council at least 10.000 euros more than what is prescribed by law.

In addition to warning the inspector that she was acting illegally and ordering her to eliminate the irregularities, the director of the Agency signed the variable and overtime compensation for March as well.