The Kosovo Office leaked Shaqiri’s birth certificate to the tabloids?

The Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs collected documents containing personal data of two Swiss football players of Albanian origin. These documents were soon published by some Belgrade based tabloids. MIA collected them at the request of the Kosovo Office, it was confirmed by the same ministry. The information, following several notifications of urgency on the matter and a warning, arrived as a response to the Commissioner’s request to declare whether anyone from the MIA had leaked these documents to the media.

5. septembar 2018.

At the end of June, before and during the FIFA World Cup in Russia, several tabloids published documents containing personal data of the two Swiss players of Albanian origin that were born in Serbia.

Immediately afterward, the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance, Rodoljub Sabic, had initiated a control procedure.

At the same time, Sabic asked the Ministry of Internal Affairs to declare whether someone from this Ministry had leaked these documents to the media.

The MIA reacted, however, after two notifications of urgency on the matter and a warning.

The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance told Belgrade based investigative program Insider that the MIA’s statement shows that the Ministry performed the disputed data processing, i.e. they collected documents from the registrar, at the request of the Kosovo Office of the Government of Serbia.

Insider journalists sent the following questions to the Kosovo Office of the Government of Serbia:

1. Why did the Kosovo Office need the data of the two Swiss players of Albanian origin born in Serbia?
2. Why did the Office request the collection of this information from the MIA?
3. How does the MIA’s statement to the Commissioner indicate that the requested documents were not leaked to tabloids by someone in the MIA, but by someone from the Office for Kosovo and Metohija and will the Kosovo Office conduct an internal investigation and sanction the person who committed the crime?

Rodoljub Sabic told Insajder that the MIA’s statement indicated that the personal documents of the football players were not leaked to the tabloids by someone from the police, but by someone from the Kosovo Office.

The Commissioner also emphasized that all the facts will have to be established by the competent prosecutor’s office on the account of this being a criminal offence.

According to the law, if an official communicates legally obtained personal data to a third party, or uses the data for the purpose for which it was not intended, they shall be liable to imprisonment not exceeding three years.