(Podgorica, 19 April 2012) – Velibor Lale Kljajević from Bijelo Polje is one of the key individuals responsible for the ruin of the towns enterprises that used to employ the greatest number of workers. These include Vunko, Građevinar and TUP Brskovo.
The workers of these firms and their representatives have submitted countless suits in the courts against Kljajević and his collaborators, though none have seen a final ruling.
In Podgorica’s Basic Court, a trial was conducted against the director of Monteadria Broker, Damjan Hosta, and his collaborators concerning allegations of having abused their positions – that is that with moneys of suspicious provenance they bought shares of TUP Brskovo from the HLT Fund.
When this investigation was launched, the Executive Director of Brskovo, which also owned the Hotel Bijela Rada, was Velibor Lale Kljajević, who owned 43% of the firm through his two companies KOMPAS and KOMP-AS.
Besides the suspicious money of Damjan Hosta, money stemming from the most wanted narco-boss in the region, Darko Šarića, was also thrown into the enterprise. Šarić would buy out worker shares and through this gain ownership shares within this Bijelo Polje based company.
Kljajević’s partners in this enterprise were Suad Pilica and Almer Mekić, who was working for Denis Hela Durović, another Šarić associate.
The workers of the firm claim that the failure of TUP Brskovo stems from all these dealings, however, it doesn’t seem like this was enough to get state prosecutors to act. We hold the courts and prosecutors just as responsible for the destruction of the north as the government.
While charges and evidence concerning the criminal acts of the most famous resident of Plevlja (Šarić) are proliferating in the neighborhood, in the EU and in Latin America, Montenegro’s prosecutors are ignoring available evidence that has been submitted to them.
The key role that Kljajević has placed in the privatization of firms in Bijelo Polje is illustrated by the fact that he was also in the Steering Committee of Vunko, as one of its co-owners. The bankruptcy proceedings in the Vunko case, during which valuable real-estate was sold off, were launched on the initiative of the State Prosecutor’s Office because Vunko had amassed €3.8-million in debts.
This was indicative however, since this was the first case in which the state itself insisted that bankruptcy proceedings be introduced in a factory. It was even more indicative that the owners of the firm at the same time were denying the existence of this debt by claiming that the government had written it off.
Vunko’s workers filed a complaint with the prosecutor, claiming that the firm’s property had been plundered during the bankruptcy process. However, the prosecutor rejected their complaint by claiming that everything was done in accordance with the law.
Just as Vunko’s workers continue to attempt to defend their rights and recover a part of the money that is owned to them by the new owners, so too those who have worked in Radnik also aren’t neutral when in comes to the services rendered by Kljajević in that firm’s destruction.
This once renowned construction company, which used to employ around 1300 workers, was destroyed through its segmentation into several smaller companies. One of these successor firms fell into the hands of this Bijelo Polje based businessman and the owner of KOMPAS and KOMP-AS.
Workers have submitted to MANS dozens of pages of disputed agreements and documents concerning the failure of these firms, as a result of which they lost their jobs, salaries and have yet to see severance payments. Even though we’ve submitted a substantial number of cases to prosecutors and to the Government, suspicious privatizations in the north have been hushed up. It is for this reason that we’re puzzled by the fact that prosecutors and the government have now remembered the north and might actually investigate these cases and perhaps eventually help the workers.
