Come back in 18 years
Transparency Serbia filed an appeal against the City of Belgrade to the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and urgency to the Government of Serbia because these two authorities did not respond to the request to provide information on the construction of public buildings in Belgrade Waterfront.
This silence of the two state bodies is complementing a long line of arrogance, irregularities and illegalities, in connection with the Belgrade Waterfront project. One item deserves constant attention of the public, if not for something else, because of the fact that it is almost 300 million Euros, or 33 billion dinars.
That is, in fact, the value of the contribution for the construction land which, according to the”lex specialis” does not have to be paid to the investor if he, in return, builds public facilities in the same value. And if the investor, thanks to the “lex specialis” builds these buildings, he will build them without a public procurement procedure, entrusting the business to the companies of their choice.
This is the reason for the red lights with the inscription “corruption risk” to light up.
In the absence of competition, the investor who conducts the works will have an interest in showing as much price for his work as possible, in order to pay as much of the contribution to the ending of construction land. Above all, we do not know what the plan is for the construction of public buildings (a document has never been published), has anything been built so far (whether it is a “promotional booth” or a private café, or is it a “promenade”) and how much it costs (that is, with how much it has been booked, because it will be difficult to find out how much it really cost).
The contract, normally, foresees that the entire project is being built for 30 years, and that 50% will be completed in 20 years, so that it could be expected that the public will then be given a report on what is really planned and what was built. In order not to wait for another 18 years, we asked the Government of Serbia on August 21st for information on land and the construction and reconstruction of public buildings in the area of the project “Belgrade Waterfront”, which includes data on the type of buildings that were built or reconstructed, performed works on land, the value of these investments, the procedure applied to the selection of the contractor and performed expert and financial supervision, from the conclusion of the contract to the day of the action on the request.
We asked the Belgrade authorities whether City has made a decision that the works on land construction, including the construction of public buildings, public property realized by the investor on the basis of the contract on the construction of the project “Belgrade Waterfront” – are recognized as the settlement of the total obligation in the name of the contribution for the regular of construction land and whether such proposal or initiative is addressed to these authorities.
Namely, “lex specialis” stipulated that the fee could be settled, but it is necessary that the local self-government unit decides to do so. In case where such a decision was not made, we asked for copies of the documents from which it can be seen how many contributions have been received for the editing of construction land in the area where Belgrade Waterfront project is being implemented. And if the costs are settled – to provide us with reports on what is built from public buildings, or how much work has been done on the editing of construction land, including the construction of public surfaces, as well as the construction of publicly owned facilities investor based on contract.
The competent authorities have not responded yet, which is why we filed an appeal or urgency. Namely, against decisions (or in case of silence) of six bodies, including the Government, cannot be submitted an appeal, but only a complaint to the Administrative Court, but the procedure requires that an urgency is sent before the complaint.
