Speaker Cuts Aleksic's Mic Over Prosecutor's Flat

National Assembly Speaker Ana Brnabic took the floor away from Miroslav Aleksic, leader of the People’s Movement of Serbia, the moment he began describing a flat he links to Nenad Stefanovic, head of the Belgrade Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office (VJT). It happened on the evening of July 28, during the emergency session on the no-confidence motion against the government. The microphone went dead before the figure was spoken.

Aleksic managed only the opening words: “Nenad Stefanovic is the owner of a flat worth six hundred…” Nobody in the chamber heard the rest.

The Speaker’s reasoning was procedural.

“I am taking the floor from you because you are not speaking to the item on the agenda. You are disclosing personal information about a man who is not even here.”

The item on the agenda was the motion of no confidence in the government of Djuro Macut, and Stefanovic is neither a minister nor a member of parliament. Aleksic was left without sound on a subject he had announced as part of his case against the cabinet.

Which flat was Aleksic talking about?

The property in question is a newly built flat in Pozeska Street in Banovo Brdo, valued at roughly 650,000 euros. In the land registry it is recorded not under Stefanovic’s name but under his parents’, and that gap between who uses a property and who holds it on paper is the core of the allegation Aleksic keeps making.

He has been making it for three years. Back in 2023, speaking from the same rostrum, Aleksic claimed Stefanovic had been asking around about buying a flat in his parents’ name, and mentioned “a suitcase full of money”. That time, nobody stopped the debate.

Checking such a claim against official records is not straightforward. Nenad Stefanovic’s asset declaration is not publicly available on the website of the Anti-Corruption Agency, so a comparison between declared assets and what gets said in parliament cannot be made from the database.

The prosecutor who could not be named

Stefanovic has led the Belgrade Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office since late 2021, when he was elected to a six-year term. The route he took to the job is unusual for someone now running the largest prosecution office in the country.

• he graduated from the Higher Medical School in Zemun, and from 2001 to 2004 worked as a sanitary inspector for the Cukarica municipality
• he enrolled at the Belgrade Faculty of Law in 1997 and graduated 11 years later
• he was elected deputy prosecutor at the Third Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in 2014 and moved to the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in 2018

He founded and chairs the Association of Judges and Prosecutors of Serbia. An informal group of judges and prosecutors called Let’s Defend the Profession has called for his resignation. His office handles files that stay in the headlines, among them the case against Ljubisa Buha Cume and the proceedings around the state power utility EPS.

Why a cut microphone matters more than one sentence

We have already reported from this same session on the counterattack mounted by the governing side, when Finance Minister Sinisa Mali and ruling majority whip Milenko Jovanov answered the opposition with figures from privatisations and from the 1990s. That exchange ran without a single microphone being switched off, because it stayed inside the limits of political argument.

On Tuesday evening the dispute moved from politics to one address and one sum, and that is where it was halted. For the sponsors of the session, this proves there is a subject that cannot be spoken aloud to the end. For the Speaker, it is protection for a man who has no chance to reply because he is not in the room.

Debate on the no-confidence motion continues, with the vote to follow once it closes. Whether another sponsor tries again, and whether the sentence about the Banovo Brdo flat gets finished this time, is still open.