Serbian Media Outlet Accuses Tax Office of Harassment

Juzne vesti editor Predrag Blagojevic has accused Serbia's taxation office of putting undue pressure on the media outlet because of its critial stance towards the government.

He said months of financial inspections had continued this week, and that journalists had counted 14 different tax inspectors inspecting the media outlet and the companies it cooperated with, calling it "pressure on independent journalism".

"We don't complain about the tax inspection, because this is their job, and we don't ask for favours or to be excepted from controls, but for it to take so long goes beyond the legal framework," Blagojevic told BIRN.

He explained that tax inspectors had been checking the finances of the website, based in the southern city of Nis, for six months already, all based on an anonymous complaint.

Blagojevic added that this was inevitably interfering with their work.

"Inspectors are also checking work of companies cooperating with us, and asking them to show their contracts with Juzne vesti," Blagojevic said, calling it "pressure on companies not to cooperate with our website any more".

Juzne vesti is one of only a few media outlets reporting from southern Serbia and is well known for its critical reports about the authorities.

Its journalists have won numerous media prizes, and Blagojevic received the prestigious "Dusan Bogavac" award for ethics and courage.

On April 10, Blagojevic published a comment on the website Pescanik, saying that when tax inspectors checked the work of a media outlet for five years in a row, where each check lasted for several months, and when they spend, as he explained, nearly two years in the editorial office and "do not find the slightest irregularity, it is...