Published on 15 April 2024
FOURTH SECTION
Application no. 13696/23
Petar RADUK
against Serbia
lodged on 15 March 2023
communicated on 26 March 2024
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The applicant was a customs officer at the relevant time. On 2 September 2015, on the basis of a reasonable suspicion that he had committed bribery, the competent investigating judge placed him under secret surveillance for two months. During that time, the applicant met with certain G.Ć. on two occasions, who had been equipped with a recording device and provided the applicant with counterfeit banknotes by the police. On 23 September 2019 the applicant was convicted of accepting a bribe and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. The conviction was based, inter alia, on audio recordings made during the meetings between the applicant and G.Ć., as well as G.Ć.’s witness statement. The conviction was upheld by the higher courts. On 12 October 2022 the Constitutional Court rejected the applicant’s constitutional appeal (this decision was served on the applicant on 30 November 2022). Relying on Article 6, the applicant complains that his conviction for a bribe-related offence was unfair because, on the one hand, it was based on evidence obtained through police entrapment and, on the other, the domestic courts failed to properly address his plea of entrapment.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Was the applicant incited by G.Ć. to take the bribe and, if so, did he have appropriate procedural safeguards in that respect, as required under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention (see, for example, Matanović v. Croatia, no. 2742/12, §§ 121-146, 4 April 2017; Tchokhonelidze v. Georgia, no. 31536/07, §§ 44-53, 28 June 2018; and Akbay and Others v. Germany, nos. 40495/15 and 2 others, §§ 109-150, 15 October 2020)?
2. The Government are requested to submit a copy of the entire criminal case file in the applicant’s case.