Defence Min. asks for N1's business information when asked about Krusik scandal

Aleksandar Obradovic, a whistleblower who worked at the Serbian arms company ‘Krusik’, leaked information that implicates alleged corruption by the father of Serbia's interior minister.

When an N1 journalist asked Vulin about the Krusik scandal on Sunday, the Minister responded by asking the journalist to meet with him after the press conference and reveal N1’s business information to him, adding that she would surely be fired if she did so.

“If you would, as an employee of your company, go to Pink TV and tell them how much those who work with you are paid, which topics you will cover and how you will cover some of them, your editor would swiftly tell you goodbye. It is interesting that if you work at an arms factory and provide foreigners with confidential data, they call you a hero,” Vulin said.

“You would be fired, while this hero is supposed to be awarded. That is not normal and not possible. If this would have happened in Bulgaria, Russia or the US, that man would be called a spy. Here, the person who released confidential data from the industry is called a whistleblower and not a spy,” Vulin said.

The minister asked for all to be judged by “the same criteria.”

“I will leave you now to think, how many seconds will you stay at N1 if after this conference you come to me and tell me one on one what your next report will be on, whom it will be on, what the topics will be, and I then make that public (...),” he said.

“After the press conference you will tell me, and I am not media, what your salary is, you will tell me how much a second of airtime costs in your programme, which discount you gave to which client, I expect that information,” he said.

Vulin added that he is wondering whether it was a coincidence that the entire started in Bulgaria, Serbia’s biggest competitor when it comes to arms exports, and at a time when Bulgaria's arms exports fell by 37 percent while Serbia’s arms exports have been growing.

He also said that since the “hybrid operation Krusik” has begun, several export contracts of the Krusik factory were cancelled.

“Arms traders do not like being talked or written about. Nobody wants to come to a company where their data could be published for the entire world,” he said.