The Belgrade Economic Court threw out Telekom Serbia’s compensation demand filed against United Group and the SBB cable services provider and ordered the state-owned company to pay court expenses.
Telekom Serbia filed suit against United Group, SBB, N1 TV and the Nova.rs portal claiming unfair market practices. The Economic Court ruled that statements by the defendants were true and in line with the evidence and rejected a statement by Telekom CEO Vladimir Lucic, United Media said in a statement. It added that the economic court ordered Telekom to pay 7.5 million Dinars (1 Euro – 117 Dinars) in court expenses.
“The suit was filed because Telekom Serbia was dissatisfied with reporting by N1 and Nova.rs in the June-August period of 2020. Those media investigated the viability of Telekom’s purchases of several cable operators in Serbia during 2018 and 2019 and carried pieces written by former government Anti-Corruption Council member Jelisaveta Vasilic about Telekom’s business operations. They also reported on the justification behind the state-owned operators business decisions such as the purchase of sports rights, Telekom’s overall profitability and transparency,” the statement said.
“The suit was filed in December 2020 and Telekom demanded an unusually high 80 million Euro in damages, claiming that the independent media N1 and Nova.rs placed false information and violated the journalists’ code. Following its original ruling in May 2022, the Economic Court rejected for the second time the claim by Telekom Serbia that their reporting was unfair competition,” it said.
“By making general demands and with the high amount of alleged damages, Telekom tried to end the reporting about it and influence the editorial policies of independent media. The continued unjustified law suits just led to the state-owned operator increase the expenses which will have to be paid to the defendants,” it said and added that the new ruling and recent ruling by a Swiss court which threw out Telekom’s suit in a similar way just shows that these legal activities are an attempt by Telekom to abuse the law.
“We view the insisting on obviously groundless proceedings as a specific type of pressure by Telekom against independent media,” the statement said.
It said the media which are part of United Media will continue to inform the Serbian public about all issues of public importance in line with their independent editorial policies professionally and objectively. “Pressure from Telekom Serbia or any third party, senseless and groundless suits will not stop them,” the statement said.
Source: N1
