(Podgorica, 13 December 2012) – The High State Prosecutor Vesna Jovicevic should be able to tell the difference between facts and attempts to manipulate data. Above all she should focus on fulfilling her legal obligations and as a public official truthfully report her property holdings, since precisely such behaviour is emphasized by the European Commission as problematic in its most recent report on Montenegro.
Jovicevic should precisely detail her property holdings to the Commission for the Prevention of Conflicts of Interest, instead of engaging in polemics with MANS (after we made public discrepancies in the property she reported, which was only confirmed by her reaction).
However, the State Prosecutor failed to report to the Commission a residential space of some 194 sq m, nor that this is a four bedroom apartment in a commercial space. Furthermore, this unit was reported to the Commission the first time in 2011, but does not specify that her husband received it as inheritance.
Similarly, Jovicevic doesn’t dispute that her husband carried out construction on the house, failing to specify the value of the renovations, which certainly doubled the value of the property.
Furthermore, Jovicevic doesn’t deny that her husband’s second property, the apartment in Podgorica, was purchased (which is something MANS made public). Whether the apartment was purchased through a lease or not, isn’t something that can be established on the basis of the information provided to the Real Estate Directorate, since on the website it clearly states that the apartment was “purchased.”
On the other hand, according to information provided by Jovicevic, her family in the last three years has monthly earnings of around €3,000. In 2009, her husband had 2,400 shares in Electric Power Company of Montenegro (EPCG), only to be left without any shares the next year, announcing that he held €30,000 in cash. In the same year her husband became the owner of a Peugot 207.
Already in 2011, in the year that Jovicevic reported the home in Rijeka Cnojevica, her husband’s cash holdings were reduced to €20,000. If we assume that the difference was used to build the house, there remains an open question as to where the money for the “renovation” was obtained?
MANS analysis pointed to the logical gaps in Jovicevic’s pronouncements to the Commission and the data contained in the Real Estate Directorate. Whether corruption exists is a question that must be established by the relevant institutions, to which MANS will submit evidence gathered during its investigations.
We want to recall that the European Commission in its last report on Montenegro’s progress emphasized the question of conflicts of interest in the judiciary and among prosecutors, pointing out that “still information is not being verified regarding the officially declared property of judges and prosecutors,” and that it is necessary to strengthen mechanisms for preventing corruption in this sphere.
MANS also wants to repeat that it is the prosecutorial arm of the judiciary that has participated in suppressing many scandals at the most senior levels of the government, and that numerous criminal charges that have been filed have languished in desks for years. Because of such work, not a single prosecutor has faced any disciplinary consequences.
The inability of prosecutors to do their work according to the law and independently represents a serious break on Montenegro’s path of European integration. As a result MANS will continue researching and pointing out violations of the law so that this state can eventually become a state where the rule of law exists.
