Research Center of MANS filed to the Supreme State Prosecutor’s Office new criminal charges against several officials of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) because of electoral abuses at the recent local elections held on May 25th this year.
Four new criminal charges are just a part of the material that MANS already submitted to the State Prosecutor’s Office asking that the actors of political corruption in Montenegro to be processed, including executives and their bosses.
In separate criminal charges for abuse of the office power in electoral purposes are charged a former Mayor of the Capital Miomir Mugosa, his deputy Vladan Vucelic, Secretary of the Secretariat for Welfare Snezana Mijuskovic, Executive Director of the Agency for Construction and Development of Podgorica Nada Mugosa, and Mayor of Danilovgrad Branislav Đuranović.
In the first criminal charge are included the leaving Mayor of Podgorica Mugosa and his deputy Vucelic because of illegal implementation of the action “record-solve”, which essentially served to the DPS to achieve tremendous political impact on citizens in the Capital city right before the last local elections in favor of this party.
As the legal basis for taking actions served the Collegium Conclusion of Mayor of Podgorica from January 2013, instead of the decision that had to make the local parliament. In addition, Mugosa referred on Action plan for the fight against corruption in local government adopted only half a year later, on July 31st, 2013/
During the action the information was collected on social status, illegal construction, tax liabilities, etc. for more than 10 thousand people, on which the DPS had an accurate picture of where is the most vulnerable population. According to that, this party was in the position to create a distribution of social benefits, utility and infrastructure set up of locations, but also to make pressure because of illegal construction and tax debts of citizens and businesses.
Former Mayor of Podgorica is is covered by another criminal charge together with the Secretary of the Secretariat for Social Welfare Snezana Mijuskovic, for illegally signed contract for the project “Care of the elderly in the capital city in 2014”.
In fact, in January of this year the Capital city made the contract with Humanitarian organization Caritas of Bar’s Archdiocese, despite the fact that the Caritas of Bar’s Archdiocese does not have license to provide care for the elderly people. MANS earlier showed that the gerontology program is proved to be a great model for achieving impact in the pre-election period, because it makes double effect, on one side allows the employment of a number of people, but on the other side it is ideal way to make political influence on the members of the oldest population.
The third criminal complaint relates to the Executive Director of the Agency for Construction and Development in Podgorica Nada Mugosa, who allowed, in pre-election period in the Capital city, illegal implementation of several public procurement procedures for the road constructions, by which the budget of the Capital was damaged by hundreds of thousands of euros.
In fact, Nada Mugosa exceeded authority in a manner that she, contrary to the Law on Public Procurement, issued tenders for the construction of several roads with significantly higher estimated work values than was decided with the procurement plan of the Agency, or they have not been in it, while at the same time due dates for their completion were set for the pre-election period.
Finally, the criminal charge against the President of Danilovgrad Branislav Djuranovic refers to the abuse of the office power in connection with illegal loan of local government in order to reconstruct two city’s squares in the pre-election period.
With the budget of the municipality Danilovgrad for the last year it was not planned borrowing of local government, but without the Government’s approval on debt and budget rebalance the local parliament in November adopted the decision to borrow from the Investment Development Fund the amount of 210 thousands of euros for the reconstruction of two city’s squares.
Projects on squares started in the fall of last year, while the Investment Development Fund made a decision to approve the loan at the end of March this year, when the adaptation was almost complete, which leads to the suspicion that Djukanovic because of the election needs illegally withdrawing money from other budget lines.
These are just examples that speak for the facts that is needed stronger and closer control of subjects that directly and/or indirectly participate in the electoral process or their funds can be misused for political purposes.
However, despite a significant number of criminal charges that were filed against political and state officials, a huge part of the information about possible misuses of state funds for party purposes is still hidden by the state institutions, with brutal violation of the Law on free access to information.
In this sense it is needed and additional obligation of the institutions to submit information relevant to the implementation of all phases of the electoral process, and because of that MANS supported the formation of a special parliamentary body which would deal with monitoring of the implementation of the relevant legislation regarding elections.
Building public confidence in the electoral process will require an active role of the prosecution in processing the holders of political corruption, but also and the Parliament of Montenegro in controlling the process itself, and recognizing the space for improving politics and practice in this area.
MANS
