“EPS AD, a capital company owned by the state, is illegally denying the public important information about its work and the possible disposal of assets of great value,” the Transparency Serbia organization announced today.
According to them, Transparency Serbia, since May 26th, 2023, has been trying to verify with the Elektroprivreda Srbije the allegations presented in the media, according to which EPS was considering a proposal for the formation of a joint company with “MVM Group“ from Hungary on the formation of a joint company to which it would be transferred 11 hydroelectric power plants.
It was only after the fourth appeal that we received a reply that these data were unavailable because providing the information “would make it difficult to achieve justified economic interests between the two countries” and that the requested documents were business secrets “because they were marked as such by the author of the document”.
At first glance, it is clear that EPS AD’s decision is illegal because the request was rejected on all ten points, although no business correspondence between EPS and the Hungarian company, nor trade secrets of that company, were requested at all.
Thus, EPS treats the following as a “business secret”: whether it has the proposal and the adopted agenda of the meetings of the supervisory boards held in 2023, whether the Hungarian company’s proposal was an item on the agenda at the meetings; whether there are minutes from the meetings of the supervisory board; whether the offer was decided at the sessions; which EPS service or external consultants analyzed the submitted offer and prepared “Information” about it for the Supervisory Board; on what date EPS received the offer; with which state bodies did EPS consult or obtain opinions in connection with this offer and the like”, stated in the statement of TS.
