14.10.2017.
Vulin: I regret telling the truth
Defence Minister Aleksandar Vulin has said today that he sincerely regrets telling the truth about how he had bought the apartment and said that the apartment was bought six years ago when he was not in the executive power.
Answering the questions on the presentation of the first 100 days of the Government's work, Vulin said that the story of buying that apartment is being repeated every six months over the years, and that it is attached sometimes more and sometimes less importance.
- But the time has come for that story to be given more importance and to be far bigger. So all the data is known. It has been known for six years. Four years later, the Anti-Corruption Agency enters into the story about him. It has been for two years already that the media have been continually dealing with it, every six months, you can check it, just as it has been published in Vreme, NIN, Danas, on all portals, that I have a house on Dedinje, Senjak, Bežanijska Kosa, Portugal, Greece. So, all that exists.
Sometimes it is given importance, sometimes everyone puts effort to makes it the only story, and sometimes not. Once I was not a minister of the army, now I am. As we can see, it has its price. I am going to tell you about my apartment, that is, about half of my apartment at Zvezdara, in Belgrade; it was written about, shared, tweeted, talked about, liked, more than all the plundering privatizations in Serbia since 2000 to date and more than the property of any politician from 2000 onwards. All right, I would like that we have dedicated as much as 10 percent of the attention to the plundering privatizations, maybe someone would answer. Nobody did. All right. I am not looking for any excuses.
- What I want to tell you and it is good that the entire Serbia knows that I bought an apartment six years ago at a time when I was not a representative of the executive power, and when I could just, like most of my colleagues here, hope that we will become power, at the time when I was a member of Parliament for a few weeks. And that is all. But that is good, too. What I want to say to all of Serbia is what I sincerely regret, and that is my telling the truth. I sincerely regret not thinking about how this truth would sound. I sincerely regret not doing anything else but telling the truth. I should have thought how it would sound. I should not have said how it was done. I should not have said that the family helped me. I should not have said that. I could have said anything else. I should have said anything else. I should. I did not do it.
- I told the truth six years ago, not thinking that this truth would be the most terrible accusation in Serbia. I should not have told the truth. I regret telling the truth. I regret acting according to the law. I should have not declared it; it could have been very simple. I could have declared it as my wife’s, mother’s, brother’s, father’s, without any problem. Do not forget, it is not a building. I did not build a building on Vračar pasture, but legally, officially, publicly declared the purchase of my apartment six years ago and did it with my wife and my whole family. And I gave everything I had and I could for that purpose. I made a mistake. I should have acted as those ones for whom you are discovering now to have yachts in Croatia.
I should have explained that it was all given to me by some father-in-law and nobody would ever ask that father-in-law for the tax return, there is no need for that, because everything is fine, we agreed. I should have done so. I did not. I told the truth not thinking how much that truth could be harmful. Not thinking about what this truth would do to me and my family, not thinking about what political cosequences this truth would have for me. I told everything to the investigating authorities several times, I am looking forward to that, I was the first to ask that everything is checked once again.
- Let us do it all over again. It does not matter, the two prosecutor's offices are not important, the Agency is not important, no one is important, we are starting from the beginning, I am looking forward to that, but what will happen if it is confirmed once again that everything is exactly as I said. Will any of you say sorry for calling me a thief, a criminal, a madman, a liar? No. Will any of you tell that you were wrong about anything? - No. They say that in legal states, and Serbia is a legal state, that there is something called the presumption of innocence. They say that as long as you do not convict someone, you have to write “If”, “perhaps”, “if it proves” ... It did not occur to anyone of you. Interestingly, when the President of the Republic of Serbia commenting on the verdict of Mišković, told you “here you are with tycoons, let them rule Serbia”, you all jumped on him, saying that this is a pressure on the judiciary. And when you are commenting the prosecutorial decisions you do not like, then it is a proof that there is no legal state in Serbia.
Let us just try, at least once, to have the same standards, nothing more than that. Only “if”, just add “maybe”, just add “if it is proven”, just when it is over, I am not asking from you anything more than that. Without any doubt, you have all tried me, you have all convicted me, and all state authorities that said there is no criminal offence are a shame for you , you have attacked them all and that is not a pressure on the judiciary, not at all. The pressure on the judiciary is only if something is said that does not suit many of you. And once again, I am looking forward and asking, if this is not a pressure on the judiciary, that everything is checked again, checked for the third and the fourth time. And once again I want the entire Serbia to know, I honestly regret telling the truth. I should not have done so.
VIDEOGALLERY14.10.2017
mp4 (248,25 MB)Video
