By: Sara Bertoncelj / Nova24tv
“If my only sin is that I was appointed to this position during the time of the government of Janez Janša, then we are obviously in the period of freedom now,” the lawyer and member of the Supervisory Boards of the Slovenian Press Agency (Slovenska Tiskovna Agencija – STA) and Telekom, Radovan Cerjak, commented on the recent article published on the web portal 24ur, in which the author wondered “whether the government will replace the STA supervisor who disclosed a confidential document.” With his statement, Cerjak was, of course, not only referring to himself, but also to all others that the new government of Robert Golob has added to its list of people to replace. Cerjak also emphasised that he never acted politically but always strictly professionally.
The general assembly of the Telekom company will take place soon, and in light of this, the new authorities are trying to pin an old, disputed matter on Radovan Cerjak, a member of the Supervisory Board, as they were not able to find anything new to blame on him. Namely, it seems that the government of Robert Golob prepared the lists of people to be replaced not only for the public administration, but also for the supervisory boards in companies. Cerjak emphasised that the matter in question, which Bojan Veselniovič first accused him of in the past, had also been considerably modified. Namely, Cerjak never stole any document, but actually received one, and then no decision was made that the document in question should not be taken away. If a member receives something at a meeting of the Supervisory Board, it is usually intended for his or her own archive.
It should also be pointed out that Cerjak did appear on the show Tema dneva (Topic of the Day) on our television station, but he only spoke about the contract, which he considered to be harmful – and he still believes so to this day. The 24ur web portal wrote that the Ethics Commission of the Bar Association of Slovenia discussed Cerjak’s conduct on the basis of a complaint submitted by the Slovenian Press Agency on the 20th of July last year – namely, it was submitted by the agency’s then-Director, Veselinovič. “In it, he wrote that Cerjak, like all of the other members of the Supervisory Board, received a contract at the meeting on the 8th of March 2021, concluded between the Slovenian Press Agency and the newspaper Dnevnik, which was marked as a business secret,” they pointed out. However, Cerjak never mentioned the contract in question by name. Nevertheless, he has been accused of publicly talking about the content of the contract with the Dnevnik newspaper.
“Perhaps they even think that I will resign, but I will not,” Cerjak pointed out, who believes that the whole thing is happening at the request of someone from the background. “This is the time of freedom – at least for some people – and this is just what they do. But if anyone thought I was just going to stand in front of a wall and say that I was guilty, they were wrong. I do not intend to change my beliefs – if my political beliefs are the reason I have to leave, they should replace me, but this will, of course, require an appropriate procedure. The government did not appoint me to the position at the Supervisory Board, I was appointed by the National Assembly,” he pointed out. If the new government wants to dismiss Cerjak, it will have to change the law – however, this would not come as a surprise to him. “But I know that I am not the only one, they are probably targeting others as well,” Cerjak added, pointing out once again that he does not intend to change or resign. If that is what they expected, they were wrong.
And remember, in March of last year, Cerjak told Nova24TV that ever since he joined the STA Supervisory Board (in October of 2020), he has had a feeling that he was being blocked from supervision. “When I requested certain documents on several occasions, there were always a thousand and one problems, which meant that I could not get the said documents. For example, I once asked to see the employment contract of the director of the company, Mr Bojan Veselinovič. The contract was handed to us at the meeting of the Supervisory Board, and after a minute or two, it was snatched from my hands. A similar thing happened with the price list.” Cerjak pointed out that supervision cannot be done this way. “I took two contracts with me, I studied them when, and when I saw the content, it finally became clear to me why it was so difficult for them to hand over this contract,” he said, adding that after he had the time to go over them, he was certain that the contract was concluded markedly to the detriment of the Slovenian Press Agency. “In my estimation, this contract caused economic damage of at least a quarter of a million euros for the STA,” he assessed.