Mayor of Bar Municipality Žarko Pavićević to be Investigated
(Podgorica, 17 June 2011) – The Special State Prosecutor for Organized Crime will initiate pre-trial proceedings against the President of Bar Municipality Žarko Pavićević for abuse of office in several instances to the detriment of the municipal budget. The announcement was made after evidence was submitted by MANS to prosecutor Đurđina Ivanović.
The meeting held today was initiated by prosecutor Ivanović, after the latest information that MANS publicly released, relating to business dealings between Aco Đukanović’s company and Bar Municipality (raising suspicions that Pavičević amended zoning regulations in order to enable Đukanović to triple the value of his land).
In addition to this case, MANS also introduced the prosecutor to nine other cases in which there exist reasonable grounds to believe that the President of Bar Municipality – due to personal interests or acting on behalf of third parties – abused his official position to manipulate planning and zoning regulations.
The extensive documentation submitted to the prosecutor included several suspicious agreements relating to the building of a sports hall between Bar Municipality and Pavićević’s company, the “Institute for the Construction of Bar” (ZIB), the selling of “Tehnopromet” assets, the case of the illegal registration of 275,000 m2 of property by ZIB, and the agreement reached between the ZIB and the Postal Service of Montenegro in the “FADIS” case.
MANS drew special attention to the illegal construction of a seven-story building in the center of Bar, which was a joint investment between ZIB and Miodrag Đurović, the brother of Slobodan Đurović-Kardinal (recently convicted in the murder of Ivo Pukanić, the editor of Croatia’s weekly “National”). On this occasion we also pointed to the numerous oversights on the part of the Ministry of Urban Planning and its complicity in legalizing these deals.
During the conversation, MANS reminded the prosecutor of the charges filed against Pavićević a year ago, as well as the web of related parties and Russian/Montenegrin construction companies linked to the president of Bar Municipality. We drew particular attention to the allegations that Bar Municipality has instituted a particular model of behavior and communication with investors and land owners that has extremely damaging consequences for the public interest and the municipality’s budget.
Besides the information that MANS already presented to the public, we also drew the prosecutor’s attention to those cases in which MANS – as an NGO – does not have the ability to access information in order to obtain the needed evidence in a number of cases that are potentially tied to tax evasion and money laundering. We hope that the prosecutors will pay attention to these legal violations when taking a closer look at these various dealings in Bar.
The prosecutor’s office concluded that the evidence submitted by MANS was very interesting and that it represents a sufficient basis for initiating trial proceedings in this case.
In our conversation with the prosecutor we announced our pending intention to file of criminal charges for organized crime against Žarko Pavićević, which in addition to the information already presented will include several cases MANS is currently working on that also relate to Pavićević.
Dejan Milovac
Urban Development Programme Director
