(Podgorica, 19 April 2013) – MANS pressed charges today against the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) for abuse of public office and forging signatures on oversight investigations reports into Electoral List irregularities. The charges were submitted to Supreme State Prosecutor Veselin Vuckovic.
MANS has managed to review 800 individual oversight investigation reports into the complaints of presidential candidate Miodrag Lekic. The signers of all these documents are listed as administrative investigators working for the MUP’s Sector for State Administration, Veljko Raspopovic, Lidija Pantovic and Goran Petrovic.
However, a comparison of the reports reveals that their signatures differ significantly from one report to another. MANS has identified at least eight different signatures of these inspectors, with nearly 90% of the signatures belonging to four of the most common types. Given the difference in signatures, it’s not possible to determine which of these reports were signed by someone other than the inspectors. Since oversight investigations are a basic right of voters and the integrity of their vote, we believe that such security ‘mistakes’ are unacceptable. This is especially true when it comes to the MUP, which is supposed to be fighting against crime, not cover it up.
In this way, the validity of the oversight reports undertaken by the MUP are brought into question. All the reports that the MUP has submitted to Lekic until now are filled with irregularities (both procedural and in terms of content). The ‘quality’ and ‘results’ of the MUP’s investigations to date highlight that it lacks not only adequate legal and technical capacities to carry out the registration of citizens, but that it lacks a minimum of political will to punish violations of the law by its own employees. This is confirmed by the silence of Minister Rasko Konjevic regarding all of the irregularities noted in tailoring the results of the recent presidential elections.
