When he is a former football player of Crvena zvezda Vujadin Savić went with a lawyer to testify in police, he surely expected what everyone in an organized state expects - professionalism, confidentiality and respect for procedure. Instead, just a few days later, the details of his testimony ended up being the topic of conversations in Belgrade pubs, then on social networks, and then on the front pages of the regime's tabloids.
What should have remained part of the official record became public gossip, and state institutions, the police and the prosecutor's office, instead of preserving the integrity of the proceedings, became a channel through which confidential information reaches the public.
Former football player Vujadin Savić blackmailed with "private recordings"
The case of Vujadin Savić, the son of former national team player and Red Star goal scorer Dušan Savić, has been followed from the beginning by an unusual mix of contradictory information, rumors and half-information. While some media announced that Savić gave a statement regarding the incident, others made a sensationalist story about his private life, while ignoring the fact that coming to the police was voluntary and accompanied by a lawyer - which should indicate a willingness to respect laws and institutions.
However, trust in institutions is not a one-sided process. When information from an investigation, regardless of its content, appears in the media before the procedure is completed, it is clear that the system has failed somewhere. In this case, the police, at least indirectly, became the source of a narrative that looks more like a reality show than a serious legal procedure.
Pantić: Leaking information is a regular occurrence
Lawyer Marko Pantić tells "Vreme" that for lawyers leaking information from the state apparatus is a regular occurrence.
"It has become regular when you are dealing with this business, because it has happened quite a few times that, especially when we are working on cases that are interesting to the media, it is published in the media what evidence the prosecutor will propose or what crime the prosecutor will accuse the suspect of, before it is communicated to the lawyers," Pantić states and adds that this is something that is an obligation in the procedure.
However, many times it turned out that - after all, it was not.
"What happened doesn't surprise me at all," says Pantić.
In Serbia, almost everything passes without consequences
Leaking information from police investigations is not a new phenomenon. Similar cases happen frequently in Serbia — from the publication of photos from police records to "anonymous" statements by officials about ongoing investigations.
Such omissions, which in democratic countries are the subject of disciplinary and criminal proceedings, in Serbia usually pass without consequences.
In the case of Vujadin Savić, the consequences are not only for the individual. The public gets the message that every visit to the police is a potentially public matter, that privacy is not protected, and that trust in the institution is, to put it mildly, pointless.
Who, after such an example, would have the confidence to report violence, threats or abuses, if they knew that the details from the testimony could end up in someone's announcement on social networks or in the tabloids already tomorrow?
And what should the regular procedure look like?
Pantić explains that witness statements would have to be secret.
"Eventually, the data can become public if the defendant believes that it could contribute to his defense. And this happens most often in 'political' cases. This has happened in various cases when the defense attorney says: 'The prosecutor here has nothing to do with the case, he is prosecuting us here politically'. In that case, there can be no talk of abuse when it is voluntarily shared with the public. In other proceedings, statements must be secret," notes Pantić.
And he adds: "Information of this kind (the Savić case) should not come out of the competent institutions, but we are all witnesses that it happens often."
Pantić states that the state has its own mechanisms to save confidential data, but not to run it.
"As for everything, the legal framework exists, and it is good, but there is no will to process it and start to suppress it. If there were several final verdicts that someone from the police, prosecutor's office or court or other state company would be sentenced for releasing confidential information to the public - I believe it would have a strong influence so that this does not happen in the future. And we have the complete opposite situation where hardly anyone is punished and that is how it continues."
The police as a political tool
The role of the police in Serbia has long been in doubt. From the way protest participants are treated, to the selective application of the law, to political influence in the work of the MUP, it is clear that trust has been shaken.
The Savić case, although apparently "personal", is just one more in a series of indicators of how institutions, instead of working in the interests of citizens, become instruments of social pressure. This erases the border between private and public, between legal and informal.
At one point, the line between journalistic reporting and police gossip became invisible. Tabloids have long since turned police records into tabloid "exclusive stories", and citizens into passive participants in a spectacle in which no one knows what is the truth and what is a construction. But it is read, watched and clicked.
That model does not survive by accident – it feeds a system in which public humiliation becomes a means of control, not truth. Every citizen who loses trust in institutions becomes isolated, left to himself. This is precisely why the case of Vujadin Savić cannot be seen as just another "scandal", but as a symptom of deep institutional decay.
Fear instead of trust
When information "leaks" from the police, which then becomes a weapon of media lynching, it is clear that the line between public interest and private shame has been erased. In such an environment, citizens stop seeing the police as a place of safety and protection and rightly experience it as an extended arm of political and media pressure.
The case of Vujadin Savić, no matter how much the tabloids try to reduce it to gossip, is actually a serious, very obvious and frightening warning.
Because, if the institutions cannot protect the confidentiality of a statement, how can they protect and preserve any citizen?
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