Verified SLAPP: Serbian Construction Company Targets City Councillor over Permit Concerns

Multinational construction company Tesla Park Ltd has launched a private criminal case against university professor, city assembly councillor and former member of Serbian parliament, Tamara Milenković-Kerković, threatening her with fines and possible jail time for a video in which she raised concerns about the legality and safety of the company’s construction project.

The case bears all the hallmarks of a SLAPP: the use of criminal law to punish public-interest speech that challenges powerful investors.

The dispute concerns Tesla Park Ltd’s plans to build a large residential complex of around 2,500 apartments on a hill above an old factory site in the Serbian City of Niš – land previously designated for public use, parks, and sports facilities, and widely regarded as the city’s last wild urban forest.There were local public protests about this throughout 2024.

Tesla Park Ltd presents itself as a local company but is owned through offshore structures linked to a larger international corporate group. Parts of that group have previously been sanctioned by the EU and the United States, and were earlier blocked from a controversial development near a protected water source in Belgrade following mass protests.

Tamara Milenković-Kerković is Professor of Business Law at the Faculty of Economics, University of Niš, Republic of Serbia, and an environmental activist, as well as being a Member of Local Parliament in Niš, and an ex Member of Parliament from 2022-2024. She has a background as a political leader, of challenging the legality and harmful consequences of forest and wildlife destruction both nationally and within her own local environment.

On 5 November 2024, Tamara Milenković-Kerković published a video and press release warning that construction had begun — including tree removal and hillside excavation — despite the absence of a construction permit in the official public registry.

Her warning came days after a deadly construction-related collapse in Novi Sad, which killed 16 people, and amid regional concern following a landslide disaster in Bosnia and Herzegovina linked to illegal quarrying. She warned that excavating a forested, clay-based hillside could increase the risk of floods and landslides, and described the project as a “privileged investment” in the city’s “last green oasis,” concluding: “Corruption kills.” She called for urgent inspection and enforcement.

Shortly after this, construction work stopped. It did not resume until early 2025. The construction permit was issued only at the end of the year, and Milenković-Kerković filed an appeal citing geological risks and the project’s proximity to a major gas storage facility.

In April 2025, in what objectively appears to be a retaliation to Milenković-Kerković’s public resistance to their project, Tesla Park Ltd issued a private criminal prosecution for defamation, accusing the defendant of intentionally spreading false information in her video and demanding thousands of euros in compensation. The use of a criminal prosecution in this way – the ultimate sanction of which is a prison sentence – is unreasonably threatening.

A public official now faces criminal liability for questioning an opaque development project, warning of environmental and safety risks, and calling on authorities to enforce the law.

For Tesla Park this is not about protecting reputation. It is about using criminal law to intimidate its critics, deter protest, and chill public debate over urban development, corruption, and environmental harm. As such, it bears all the hallmarks of a SLAPP — a strategic lawsuit aimed not at winning on the merits, but at silencing dissent.