(Podgorica, 2 April 2012) – MANS today submitted to the Special State Prosecutor for Organized Crime and Corruption Đurđina Ivanović criminal charges against the Supreme State Prosecutor (SSP) Ranka Čarapić on suspicion that she committed the criminal act of abuse of position during an extended period of time.
In the charges filed today by MANS, the SSP is suspected of not completing and abusing the powers of her office, directly and indirectly influencing cases in order to through out many of them and to prevent criminal proceedings against specific persons (from which her and her family gained considerable property, while damaging the state budget for millions of euros). Ranka Čarapić is also suspected of having continuously hidden the fact that she financial depends upon individuals who were the subjects of investigations by the SP’s office due to criminal acts involving corruption.
One of the reasons for submitting the criminal charges is the suspicion that Ranka Čarapić is preventing prosecutors from pursuing and processing the former Prime Minister Milo Mila Đukanović, as well as several former and current ministers and directors of KAP on suspicion that in the privatization of the Podgorica Aluminum Combine they cost the state budget more than €800-million.
Similarly, the Prosecutor’s Office headed by Ranka Čarapić has failed to open investigations into the responsibility of returning over €200-million in credits and taxes by Oleg Deripaska, that is CEAC’s for KAP, and who is responsible for the fact the private debts will be handled by the state. On the other hand, the criminal charges filed by the Montenegrin Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) against former KAP director Vjeceslav Krilov as a result of the ecological incident that occurred in February 2009 was concluded with Krilov being found not guilty, while the whole affair was reduced to the actions of one KAP employee.
At the time of that case, the Comexport company owned by her husband, Budimir Čarapić, was successfully making deals with KAP, earning between €60,000-€72,000 a month. This confirms our suspicions that the SSP couldn’t have been objective when it came to rulings related to KAP. With Krilov on his own an agreement was signed worth €68,000 during 2010.
The companies that her husband cooperated with and that were the subjects of judicial investigations include the Electric Power Company of Montenegro (EPCG) and the Railways of Montenegro. Investigations into the severance payments and rewards given to the EPCG management, as well as suspicions concerning the management of money in the Railways were placed ad acta, while the deals that Comexport has cut with the EPCG can be measured in the hundreds of thousands of euros.
Such illegal actions by the SSP as the supervisor of all prosecutors is particularly visible when it comes to Podgorica’s Mayor Miomir Mugoša, who was the subject of a great number of criminal charges all of which were thrown out by the SSP.
Ranka Čarapić, as the highest ranking prosecutor in Montenegro, is allegedly responsible for the fact that a few years ago Mugoša was able to avoid criminal charges in the case of the illegal transfer of 15,205 m2 of city lands to the Carine company for €2.5-million instead of their actual €13.5-million value.
The abuse of her powers and the failure to initiate criminal proceedings enabled Mugoša and other individuals to avoid legal consequences. The accused directly enabled, contrary to the ruling of the High Court which was adopted following a private complaint, that Mugoša successfully manages to transfer city lands to Carine in 2011.
The accused also enabled Mugoša to avoid any legal consequences when, together with his son Miljan, they attacked a Vijesti photojournalist. The Prosecutor’s Office did nothing about the gun that was in the possession of Mugoša’s son, nor the unregistered gun possessed by Mugoša. The accused managed all the proceedings in this case and contrary to her profession publicly accused the editor of Vijesti of being the actual aggressor. She directed all of the prosecutions efforts towards proving that Vijesti’s editor was responsible for the incident and thus absolve mayor Mugoša of any responsibility.
SSP also rejected the criminal complaint filed against Mugoša by the former leader of the SDP and former Deputy President of the Government Žarko Rakčević, who submitted documentation to the accused that proves fraud in the ordering of medicines during the time Mugoša was Minister of Health.
Article 6 of the Law on the State Prosecutor states that the function of the state prosecutor is to be carried out in the public interest in order to ensure the implementation of rights, which should include the protection of human rights and freedoms and that the function of state prosecutor needs to be fulfilled in an unbiased and objective way.
Contrary to this Constitutional provision, the accused has fulfilled her duties as SSP in the interests of herself and her family, instead of pursuing the public interests. She therefore enabled that a number of key officials avoid legal accountability and securing for herself property benefits.
We believe that the responsibility for the absolutely inadequate results in the fight against corruption and organized crime needs to be personalized, since the lack of political will, the politicization of the Prosecutor’s Office and the obvious conflicts of interest are something that needs to be resolved in so far as we want to see further progress on the road to EU integration.
The current SSP, overburdened with such obvious conflicts of interest, is an absolute barrier and it is naive to expect that we can achieve any serious results in the fight against corruption and organized crime while the SSP office is headed by Ranka Čarapić. We need a prosecutor that will investigate and issue arrest orders, that will be ready for a “Sanader” type scenario, and who isn’t obedient to the interests of “moral criminals.”
