(Podgorica, 24 December 2012) – MANS will submit tomorrow to the Supreme State Prosecutor the first complaints due to the prosecutor’s failure in relation to the criminal charges we filed during the preceding period, some of which were addressed to prosecutors several years ago.
According to the Regulations on the Internal Operations of the State Prosecutors’ Office it is stipulated that state prosecutors and his deputy must, according to case that they receive, submit a ruling within three months (and at most within six months in the context of complex cases).
In spite of such clear recommendations, a series of criminal charges that MANS submitted are awaiting rulings on a number of abuses of power by senior state officials, while on the other hand none of the prosecutors was ever held to account though either disciplinary or other forms of sanction.
As a result cases like the one against the current Minister of Sustainable Development, Branimir Gvozdenovic, who illegally distributed permits for construction in Zavala, as well as the building of a building in Bar, owned by Miodrag Djurovic, the brother of Slobodan Djurovic (better known as the underworld figure Kardinal) who was involved in the killed of Ivo Pukanic in Zagreb.
The criminal charges against Gvozdenovic were submitted back in January 2011, but in spite of a dozen queries directed to the state prosecutors, till now we’ve received no response.
A month after these charges were submitted, in February 2011, another complaint was submitted against a senior official. The complaint concerned the Vice-President Vujica Lazovic’s involvement in the Valdanos affair. We still haven’t received a response in this case either.
Likewise, till now, the prosecutor didn’t rule on the charges we filled for organized crime against Bar’s mayor Zarko Pavicevic, even though we made the file with around 90 pieces of evidence in July 2011.
Similarly, prosecutors are ‘avoiding’ to act on a number of cases that MANS has submitted, along with substantial evidence, at the beginning of this year. In January a complaint was filed against Branimir Gvozdenovic and the former and current minister of the economy Branko Vujovic and Vladimir Kavaric in relation to the coal mine in Berane, for which we still haven’t received a response.
The outcome of a greater number of other cases also remains a ministry, including violations of the Law on Public Procurement and suspicion of bias during tenders, which were submitted by MANS against the director of the Public Procurement Directorate Zarko Zivkovic and the director of the Traffic Directorate Veselin Grbovic.
Similarly, no steps were taken in the cases of the First Bank and the Electric Power Company of Montenegro (EPCG), even though MANS submitted organized crime charges in May of this year. The charges were submitted against the current and former Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic and Igor Luksic respectively, the Vice President Vujica Lazovic and the entire management of the state electricity company.
MANS will in the subsequent period, due to the failure of prosecutors to react, submit complaints to the Supreme State Prosecutor, while during subsequent phases submissions will be made to the Prosecutors’ Council.
