Professor Jelena Šušanj and lawyer Nikola Belada filed a criminal complaint yesterday with the Special State Prosecutor's Office (SDT) regarding the awarding of the annual Thirteenth of July Award to writer Bećir Vuković for his poetry book "Homeless Houses".
They filed the complaint because, as they claim, the State Awards Act and the Publishing Act were violated. "Pobjeda" reports.
The awarding of the award, the newspaper reminds, is currently being handled by the Basic State Prosecutor's Office, the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption and the Ministry of Culture and Media. The case will also be handled by the SDT, as well as the Administrative Court.
Professor Dragan Hajduković filed a lawsuit with the Administrative Court yesterday, claiming that he violated the articles of the Law on State Awards.
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"Pobjeda" writes that the book "Homeless Houses" still cannot be found in bookstores of "Obodski slova", which is also the publisher of Vuković's work, allegedly in 2024. The book is not in the National Library "Đurđe Crnojević", nor have the librarians received a request for registration and assignment of an ISBN number. So far, the book, it is recalled, has only been seen in the hands of Dragan Koprivica in the show "Načisto" on TV Vijesti and Bećir Vuković, when he read verses from it during the awarding of the Thirteenth of July Award. It also exists in the virtual world, in the COBISS system of Serbia, in the National Library in Belgrade. In that library, there is one copy in the reading room that is intended for loan. "Pobjeda", as it is stated, checks the Cobiss system daily, and no one has borrowed that copy since the day it appeared, on July 9.
The book was supposed to be promoted tonight at the Radosav Ljumović National Library in Podgorica, and the author, publisher Radomir Uljarević, and Milorad Durutović were announced as speakers.
However, it was announced yesterday that the promotion was being canceled "due to the author's new obligations," and that a new promotion date would be announced at a later date.
SDT application
In their criminal complaint to the SDT, Šušanj and Belada wrote that the legality and regularity of the awarding of the award to Vuković has been called into question, which, they claim, is the result of organized and deliberate action by several individuals.
"Given the above, it is clear that in this particular case, there is an organized activity of several persons, business entities and institutions, to abuse their position and authority, mask and conceal real facts and present false data to prove that the book in question was published in the competition year 2024 and thus enable Bećir Vuković to receive the annual Thirteenth of July Award for the said book," the application states.
They point out that due to the unavailability of all data, both regarding the procedure itself, the procedure for awarding the Thirteenth of July Award, the unavailability of the rules of procedure for the work of the jury, and all data regarding the publication of the book, data from the competent institutions for issuing the catalog number - CIP and international standard designations for publications, as well as due to the incomplete factual situation, it is impossible to identify all persons and entities who participated and contributed to the "irregular awarding" of the award to Bećir Vuković and to determine and specify the criminal offenses that, as they claim, preceded and were committed in the process of awarding the award in question.
It is questionable, they state, among other things, whether the aforementioned book could have entered the award procedure, because based on publicly available data, it is questionable whether the book in question was published in the competition year of 2024.
They also said that it was determined that the data from the imprint did not refer to the book "Homeless Houses" by Bećir Vuković, but to the book "Taken to a Deserted Island", that the data in COBISS had been changed, so "Homeless Houses" took its place in the register of "Njegoš's Evenings of Poetry", which was organized by Gojko Božović in 2024, also published by the publishing house "Štampar Makarije"...
They also reminded that before publishing a publication, the publisher is obliged to keep records of published publications, which include the title of the publication, the name of the author, the number of editions, the circulation, the year and place of publication and the name of the printer, which must be submitted to the National Library at the end of each year for publications published in the current year. They state that in this specific case, one of the publishers of the book, as can be seen from the imprint, is "Obodsko slovo" Podgorica, which as a publisher has not fulfilled the stated obligation, because in the National Library of Montenegro "Đurđe Crnojević", according to the statement of the director of Lompar, and also according to the available data in Cobiss, the stated book is not registered and there is no data about it.
"It is also incredible that during the process of awarding the Thirteenth of July Award, the highest state recognition, and especially after all these facts that have emerged in the public, which call into question the regularity of awarding the award to Bećir Vuković for the book in question, the Ministry of Culture and Media, which carries out administrative supervision over the implementation of the Law on Publishing Activities and regulations adopted on the basis of that law, was not involved in order to establish the factual situation and dispel all doubts that arose regarding the publication of the book in question," the criminal complaint states.
They also point out that it is indicative "that the President of the Parliament of Montenegro, in the midst of information and solid evidence of manipulative actions, abuse of institutions and forgeries in connection with the aforementioned publication, did not at least postpone the award ceremony until it is determined whether the award of the most important Montenegrin award to Bećir Vuković violated the Law on Publishing Activities and the Law on State Awards, for which there are serious indications," reports "Pobjeda".
They propose that the SDT conduct a procedure in which it will hear all members of the jury, the director of the National Library "Đurđe Crnojević", the responsible person of the National Library of Serbia, the Minister of Culture and Media of Montenegro Tamara Vujović, the publishers of the book "Homeless Houses" - responsible persons in the publishing houses "Obodsko slovo" and "Štampar Makarije", the author of the book and the winner of the award.
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