(Podgorica, 17 April 2013) – The fact that the EPCG wrote-off €17-million in electricity bills to households in the first nine months of 2011 and 2012 are data from the state electricity company, contained in its business reports for the period under consideration.
According to its own public financial statements, the EPCG wrote-off €4.3-million in household electricity debt in 2011 and another €13-million in 2012. At the same time, the same financial statements indicate that in the first nine months of 2011 another €5-million was written-off for enterprise electricity debts.
We repeat, it is very revealing that in an election year like in 2012, household debt write off tripled in relation to the previous year (when no elections were held). It is worth noting that in recent weeks we’ve received a substantial number of reports from citizens claiming that through electricity debt write offs votes were bought for the ruling party in the lead up to the parliamentary and presidential elections.
Yesterday, the EPCG stated that the debt write-offs totalled only a few hundred thousand euros. If this is the case, than their publicly released financial data would be erroneous. We’d like to remind the directors at the EPCG that manipulating financial data is a serious criminal offence carrying a maximum prison sentence of 10 years.
We’re calling on the EPCG, instead of trying to convince citizens to take them at their word (while hiding all relevant documents from them), to publicly release their list of individuals and enterprises who have had their electricity debts written-off and the reasons for doing so.
According to the new Law on Free Access to Information, the EPCG must submit all documentation requested of it. In this concrete case, there is a clear public interest in releasing information on who had their debts written-off and on what basis. In essence, this would reveal who were first-class citizens and who were second-class citizens when it came to paying electricity bills.
At the moment, MANS is analyzing substantial documentation concerning the EPCG, pointing to abuses in business management, something we’ll be processing in the coming period through the relevant state institutions.
