With lies and insults, Vesic defends circumventing the law

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The program director of Transparency of Serbia, Nemanja Nenadic, reacted to the insinuation, lie and insult made by the deputy mayor in a statement for one of Belgrade tabloids:

The deputy mayor of Belgrade, Goran Vesić, stated: “Nemanja Nenadic will go down in history as a person who would like to expel Novak Đoković from Serbia!” which not only has nothing to do with the truth but is insulting and puts me in grave danger. Namely, it can easily happen that someone believes Vesic because readers have not previously had the opportunity to read the analysis published by Transparency Serbia on the so-called “public bidding” for the lease of the sports centre in Dorcol for the next 20 years.

The competition was set for one company (organiser of this year’s tennis tournament Serbia Open, whose director was Djordje Djokovic). Only a company registered in Serbia, which has organised a specific type of tennis tournament (ATP250 or WTA250) in the past year, could apply for the lease of swimming pools and tennis courts. How absurd that is can be seen by the fact that, for example, the organiser of Wimbledon or Roland Garros, based on that condition, would be an undesirable tenant for the City of Belgrade.

The same condition applied even to a bidder who would not be interested in tennis courts, but only in swimming pools belonging to the sports centre!

So, the analysis of Transparency does not involve Novak Djokovic at all or his relatives who do business in Serbia. It deals with circumventing the law by the Commission for Business Premises of the City of Belgrade, which Deputy Mayor Vesic protected in this way. TS also points out that the City of Belgrade, if it wants to help organise the tennis tournament “Serbia Open”, could do so in some of the legal ways and with clean bills (e.g. public-private partnership, subsidies), instead of setting conditions for “public tender” the way that only one company can apply.