(Podgorica, 9 April 2012) – MANS today submitted criminal charges against Podgorica mayor Miomir Mugoša and the former Minister of Urban Affairs and the actual political director of the ruling DPS, Branimir Gvozdenović, for suspicion that they seriously abused their power in granting building permits and retroactively legalizing numerous residential and business buildings into planning documents.
Criminal charges were also filed against Radenko Radojević, the owner of the RR Inženjering firm and Kapacity, which were the key investors in the aforementioned buildings. Charges were also filed against his collaborators Nikola Radojičić and Dejan Bracović under suspicion that they built objects on the basis of illegally issued building permits. They are also suspected of trying to influence Gvozdenović to issue such a permit, or to permit Mugoša to initiated changes to the planning documents in order to hide the violations of the law.
During the meeting of the Podgorica City Council scheduled for tomorrow, councillors will consider changes to the plan for Momišići I that will effectively legalize these buildings (thus creating an alibi for the illegal issuing of building permits).
The Ministry of Spatial Planning in early 2010 issued building permits to the companies RR Inženjering and Kapacity for the building of two residential/business buildings in the Podgorica neighborhood of Momišići. The existing planning document foresaw that this space could accommodate at most a building with a cellar, ground floor, two floors and an attic.
However, Branimir Gvozdenović issued a building permit that allowed these companies to considerably depart from the dimensions allowed in the existing city planning regulations. Radenko Radojičić thus received a permit to build two buildings that have a garage, a service floor, a cellar, as well as three basements, a ground floor, two floors and an attic, for a total of ten floors. The total area of the building, without the garage, was around 7,750 m2 and the second building some 4,100 m2.
After construction on these buildings began with the illegally issued building permit, the mayor of Podgorica at the same time initiated changes to the planning document that would allow the legalization of these buildings. In mid-2010, Mugoša adopted such a decision. As the decision was being made, Mugoša was informed that the changes weren’t in accordance with higher order planning documentation, so the mayor moved to change at the same time the General Urban Plan (GUP). The decision to amend the GUP was adopted in early August 2010, explicitly stating that the plan is being changed to make it conform with a lower-order plan (thus directly violating the Law on Spatial Planning and the Construction of Buildings).
MANS submitted critiques of the amendments during the public consultations on the changes, pointing out the violations of the law, though we were ignored. The initiative was also brought before the responsible inspectorate in relation to the illegal issuing of building permits – though here again the inspectorate ignored the facts.
The results of these violations of the law by Gvozdenović and Mugoša are two residential/business buildings that are nearly complete and whose eventual legalization will be confirmed at tomorrow’s City Council meeting.
In the criminal charges filed to with the Special Prosecutor for Organized Crime and Corruption, MANS proposed that the relations and communications between Radenko Radojičić and his collaborators (on the one hand) and Gvozdenović and Mugoša (on the other) be separately investigated. It is particularly important to investigate how Radojičić secured the illegal issuing of permits by Gvozdenović and what motivated Mugoša to once again violate the law during the preparation of the planning documentation.
This case once again confirms that the mayor of Podgorica isn’t able to legally manage the capital city, and that we will probably be uncovering for a long time to come all that the former Minister of Urban Planning Gvozdenović did during his mandate. MANS has continuously warned Montenegrin prosecutors that it must undertake concrete measures when it comes to these two individuals against whom a number of criminal charges have been filed and that their behavior needs to be eventually punished.
A number of cases against Mugoša are still waiting to be heard that are tied to the Carine case, without signs that an investigation will soon be launched. Gvozdenović is also suspected of having assisted in the legalization of the Zavala development, hotels on property belonging to Brano Mićunović, the devastation of the Sveti Stefan region and the Miločer Park, as well as the legalizations of buildings tied to Bar’s mayor Žarko Pavičević (and associated figures).
We believe that it is time for someone to eventually bear the responsibility for the enormous damage that was caused to Montenegro’s budget through abuses in urban planning and the construction sector. The Prosecutor’s Office must no longer ignore cases of corruption and organized crime at the highest levels.
