Podgorica, 25 January 2011 – MANS today filed criminal charges against the deputy of the Municipal State Prosecutor, Saša Čađenović, on suspicion that he abused his position and acted negligently in the performance of his official duties in handling the “Carine” affair.
On 17 October 2007, MANS filed criminal charges against Podgorica’s mayor Miomir Mugoša and the director of the Property Directorate, Dragan Đukić on suspicion that they had both abused their positions in transferring municipal property to the company “Carine DOO” thus costing the city-budget €11-million in losses. The case was eventually forwarded to the Municipal Public Prosecutor in Podgorica.
At the time MANS highlighted the problematic elements of the agreement, including the fact that the land in question was alienated from the municipality contrary to existing laws, a fact that was emphasized in the criminal charges filed.
On 18 October 2008, a year after submitting the charges, MANS was informed by the Prosecutor’s Office in Podgorica that our case had been thrown-out: “because there are no significant elements of criminal actions in the activities that were reported nor those undertaken ex oficio.”
In rejecting our case, the Deputy Prosecutor Saša Čađenović drew on the Decision on Building Sites adopted by the Board of Trustees of the capital city in 2002. The Decision stipulates that transferring rights to land is possible without public auction if additional improvements are made to the plot in question. What Čađenović failed to mention was that this controversial decision of the Board of Trustees had already been invalidated as of 12 July 2003. This means that it could not have constituted the legal justification for the city government’s failure to issue a public auction for the disputed parcel of land.
Čađenović also draws on Article 22 of the Law on Building Sites, which stipulates that the owner of the land is required to tolerate transformations of urban land, in his rationale for dismissing the case. However, here again, Čađenović ignores Article 22 of that same law specifying that the transfer of ownership in such cases must be carried out through public auction, except in cases involving the expropriation of land or the construction of facilities for the public interest. Since the transfer in question does not fall under either of these categories, it is clear that the Law on Building Sites also could not have formed the legal basis on which it was made.
From the above we can conclude that the Deputy Prosecutor did not seek to establish all the relevant facts in accordance with the law, thus allowing Podgorica’s mayor Miomir Mugoša and the director of the Property Directorate Dragan Đukić to escape legal sanctions for the abuse of their positions.
Clearly what we have here is a significant failure of the Prosecutor’s Office to process clearly criminal actions, especially when considering the damage done to the city budget as a result of these actions (which can be counted in millions of euros). MANS filed new criminal charges in May of last year against mayor Mugoša, but are still waiting to hear back from the prosecutor.
Since the latest decision of the Supreme Court fully confirmed our doubts about the validity of the “Carine” agreement, we believe that there exist sufficient grounds for the Prosecutor’s Office to initiate proceedings against mayor Mugoša – as well as against all those who allowed him to avoid accountability all this time.
Dejan Milovac
Deputy Executive Director
