(Podgorica, 15 December 2011) – The agreement with Naser Kelmendi is only one of the over 70 questionable agreements concluded between former Ulcinj mayor Gzim Hajdinaga and investors. In these deals, investors agreed to pay advances on their utilities in order to legalize their illegally erected buildings. The total value of the 74 agreements that were obtained by MANS through the Law on Free Access to Information are together worth close to €2.5-million.
The collection of advanced utility payments was enabled by the Determination signed by the President of the Municipality on 1 November 2007, which stipulated that investors can pay advances on the utilities for their illegally erected buildings with the proclaimed aim of improving the flow of funds to the municipal budget. It is worth noting that the rights and obligations of citizens, in this case tied to the payment of utilities, cannot be prescribed through an individual act (which Hajdinaga did when he adopted this determination).
The Determination enabled the Municipality of Ulcinj to illegally collect utility fees from interested future investors – as well as from those involved in illegal construction – thus violating the law and existing planning documents. On the one hand, the legalization of illegal objects was accomplished with this act, while on the other the act prejudiced the future adoption of planning documents and their contents (by promising to those having paid advances that their buildings would be legalized).
Particularly troublesome is the fact that the majority of planning documents financed in this way do not exist, not even in the form of drafts, nor is it clear when the Municipality of Ulcinj will fulfill its obligations in this regard. The very form of these agreements is problematic, since in the majority of cases they don’t contain information on deadlines by which the municipality is expected to fulfill its obligations nor do they contain information defining the parcels on which these utilities are being paid.
Furthermore, even though the money paid by investors was to go towards hooking up the sites in question to municipal utility grids, in a large number of the contracts it is explicitly stated that the investor: “undertakes the duty of connecting the electrical, water, sewage and telephone networks to their property, as well as all other connections at one’s own expense, in accordance with the approval of the relevant public utilities. The investor also agrees to wholly complete any eventual relocation of underground or above ground installations, construction and repair of all necessary works at their own expense.”
Bearing in mind that none of the projected planning documents exist, and that investors committed themselves to carrying out the communal equipment of their properties on their own, it is evident that the money collected in this manner was inappropriately spent by Ulcinj’s local government.
Besides Naser Kelmendi, whose case the Montenegrin public is already familiar with thanks to MANS, Hajdinaga was also able to extract such payments from Muja Redža, another controversial Ulcinj businessman (€180,000), Džaudet Cakulij (€150,000) and from Himlija Franca, owner of the Franca company (€83,000). The largest sums were paid by Sea Terra Properties (€300,000) and Casa Valdanos (€323,000) for the urbanization of the parcels they had previously purchased.
The full listing of investors and copies of their agreements are being released by MANS on its website: www.mans.co.me.
All of these contracts were concluded on the basis of Hajdinaga’s Determination, which was adopted in contravention of the Law on Local Government and are thus legally void. MANS expects that the Prosecutor General will investigate to what degree the former mayor of Ulcinj abused his office and how the funds collected in this way were spent.
At the same time, MANS calls on Ulcinj’s municipal government to immediately release to the public all information that they possess concerning how these funds were spent.
