22. 06. 2005

RODIC WILL PAY TAX

BELGRADE, June 22, 2005 – Owner of dailies Kurir and Glas Javnosti Radisav Radic will have to pay 39 million dinars (475.610 EUR) in the name of tax. Director of the Serbian Taxation Office Vladimir Ilic said that the controls in dailies were conducted in line with the law, and that the owner was obliged to pay tax: “Despite outrageous media hunt, and series of heavy qualifications and insults issued on the account of the Taxation Office and its employees, calling them “Cerberus” and “rip-offs”, we have never stepped outside the legal frames”, said Ilic. Radisav Rodic was present at the press conference and to address Ilic tried several times, but the protocol had prevented him from doing it so. Rodic has later said that the effort and aim of the Finance Minister Mladjan Dinkic to close down the papers was behind all this. “Here says, and I quote: they did not obstruct the production. Well, when all editors, chief of desk and so on are under interrogation, how would you call it? These papers were not supposed to get out of print that day, and Dinkic’s goal was nothing more than to stop their printing. These people had to comply with their managers’ orders and I can understand that. But it all comes down to Dinkic’s ambition to stop us”, said Rodic.