The publishing and availability of final court judgments is extremely important in any society that aspires to be democratic. Apart from the fact that each judgment is pronounced publicly on behalf of the people, the transparent case law secures the rule of law and harmonised jurisprudence. Analysing court judgments, it is established whether courts observe the universal principles of equal actions in equal situations, the principle of legal certainty, and the principle of proportionality in the exercise of rights.
In addition, by analysing court judgments and case files for corruption and organised crime offences the profile of prosecuted and convicted persons may be established, and the level of corruption assessed. Namely, it is a frequent occurrence to classify non-corruption offences as the ones belonging to the group of corruption and organised crime offences, thus creating false statistics. This is particularly important given that fight against corruption and organised crime is Montenegro’s key priority on its EU path, and the voices asking for concrete results in fight against these phenomena are growing ever louder, particularly for high-level cases. The transparency of court rulings enables public scrutiny to what extent the European Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms is observed, in the manner transpiring from the European Court for Human Rights’ case law.
Finally, the public nature of the work of courts would be rendered absurd should judgments not be fully public and accessible by all interested parties and would come down to parties to the proceedings only, which are the procedural prerequisites for the trial to happen in the first place.
The report on transparency of the judiciary in corruption and organised crime cases is produced within the project implemented by six nongovernmental organisations: MANS, Safe Home for Women, Mogul, Stečajci u Crnoj Gori (Workers from Bankrupt Companies in Montenegro), Breznica and Youth Association of Montenegro.
Within the framework of this project, invoking the Free Access to Information Law (FAI Law), MANS analysed the accessibility of information on actions taken by courts in cases referring to corruption and organised crime.
The first part of the report deals with the analysis of statistics regarding the availability of final judgments, the second part contains an overview of the availability of full case files with an overview of the rulings of individual courts, while the third part deals with access to non-final judgments in corruption cases. The fourth and the fifth section of the report deal with specific problems in accessing the data held by courts including: the information on court proceedings in organised crime cases where special investigative measures were used, and the issue of the abuse of the status of the “parties to the proceedings”.
The final section presents the conclusions and recommendations in order to improve the transparency of courts regarding access to judgments and rulings by the general public.
The complete report download HERE
