The single most renowned brother in Montenegro, Aco Đukanović, under suspicious circumstances became the owner of Ivanovic Family Villa in Kotor, and allegedly intends to move in shortly.
The proofs discovered by “Pod lupom” and MANS indicate that on 20 October 2007 the palace located in Dobrota changed three owners over the same day eventually ending in his hands. The lawyer Đukanović hired, who worked for three years in the law office of his sister, Ana Kolarević, represented also the off-shore company from the British Virgin Islands that, within the span of a single day, appeared both as a buyer and a seller of the same villa.
How Aco Came into Possession of an 18-century Villa
Approximately 4,000 m2 of land, registered in the Kotor Land Registry to the name of Aco Đukanović, is located in Marovići, on the verge of the sea, between the main highway Herceg Novi – Kotor and the local road following the seashore. It consists of several lots, with the 18 century palace under the designation of the Regional Office for Preservation of Monuments of Culture on one of them. The “bokabay.info” website describes the Ivanovic Family Palace as a “typical baroque palace of three floors and a belvedere”. As explained there, it is elevated and somewhat withdrawn from the seafront, with walled and raised yard. “In this palace, the Count
Josif (Jozo) Ivanović hosted Njegoš, with his suite of 30 people, in 1833 on the occasion of his trip to Petrograd“, the website continues.
At the time of former Yugoslavia, a share of what is now owned by Aco Đukanović (a villa and 2.246 m2 of land) belonged to the Youth Holiday Association, Skopje, which sold it in 1992 to the Belgrade-based pharmaceutical company “Medifarm“. Six years later, on the account of its debts, the land and the villa were transferred to the AD Galenika Beograd.
Although on several occasions the media speculated that the state presented the palace as a gift to the brother of the DPS leader, since the land registry reads “By the decision of a state authority” under the Grounds of Acquisition, the documents obtained by MANS tell a different story. Namely, Aco Đukanović bought the land and the house from the off-shore company “Coast products Ltd” on 20 September 2007 for €2.793.000.
No Work for Mitrović
The director of the Anti Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Administration, Predrag Mitrović, sees no room for his actions in this deal. Given that the “Coast products” paid the €2 million through Raiffeisen Bank Vienna to the account held by “Galenika“ at their Belgrade branch, Mitrović clams he has no legal grounds to examine into this transaction. “The reporting entities did not report these transactions to the Anti Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Administration as cash transactions, or marked them as suspicious, and as such they could not have been processed by the Administration or caused any particular attention”, says the written response of the Administration director sent to “Pod lupom”. He also claimed being unaware of how Aco Đukanović paid the director of the “Coast products“, i.e. “how the second transaction was carried out”.
Mitrović, however, did not respond to the second part of the question – whether he would examine into these cash flows given his being unaware of them to date, i.e. that the “reporting entities” failed to report them as suspicious. By law, he may resort to international legal assistance, and in this case it is clear there would be plenty to do.
The Bill of Sale was concluded in Cetinje, signed by his lawyer Zorica Đukanović and the off-shore company director Sofia Polonskaya, which previously, on the same day, bought the very same property in Podgorica for €2.05 million from “Galenika”.
It was the time of the property market boom when the land and buildings at Montenegro’s coast were paid exorbitant prices, and thus it appears that the Belgrade-based company might have sold its property located on an attractive spot below the price. According to the media reporting of the time, the prices of land in Kotor in the last quarter of 2007 ranged between 100 and 500 euro per square metre, while the prices of buildings in the historic town core and in Perast ranged between 3,000 and 5,000 euro per square metre.
The Bill of Sale concluded with Polanskaya stipulates the total area of land being 2,246 m2 and the palace floor area 1,359 m2. Taking the lower end of the price range, for this valuable property “Galenika” could have obtained twice the price, i.e. some 4.2 million euro. This would have made this company profit from the sale of the land and the villa in Dobrota given that it was acquired from “Medifarm”, as stipulated in their mutual agreement which “Pod lupom” had the opportunity of inspecting, for 1.9 million German marks.
Since the risky time when the citizens and companies from Serbia feared for their property in Montenegro on the account of the state independence agenda was over, the question arises of who and for what reasons assessed this deal to be profitable for “Galenika”, headed at the time by the General Manager Aleksandar Pravdić, an official of the Democratic Party of Serbia. If no one took the commission for the cut-price sale of property in Dobrota, it turns out that this deal was to the profit of Sofia Polonskaya only, i.e. the company she represents and of unknown owner!?
Trusted the Off-Shore Seller Blindly
As per the stipulations of the contract with “Galenika”, the director of the off-shore company was obliged to pay for the property a day after the contract conclusion and verification with the court, or on 21 September, while Đukanović gave the money immediately. Or so it says the contract signed by Polonskaya and Zorica Đukanović: “The sale price for the property referred to in Article 1 herein amounts to €2,793,000 and the same amount was paid on the day of signing the Bill of Sale“.
Based on the difference in price, the Russian citizen earned €743,000 and had no worries about paying “Galenika”. Since Đukanović, as the contract stipulates, paid immediately for the villa, she could have used the same money to pay the Belgrade-based company.
The off-shore company manager knew what she was doing, as illustrated by the unknown fact whether she paid at all the €40,000 worth of sale tax, set at 2 percent of the transaction value. She bought it and immediately sold, and the new buyer (Aco) undertook to bear all costs, which, on this ground only, amounted to at least €90.000.
For a person who has swiftly changed his status from an unemployed to a millionaire, Đukanović appeared here rather hasty or else he fully trusted the seller since he paid the villa and the land to a person who legally still was not the owner. Namely, four days after the deal was concluded, their shared lawyer, Zorica Đukanović filed the application for registration to the names of both her clients – Aco Đukanović and Sofia Polonskaya, from whom she obtained the Power of Attorney on the day of the double sale, 20 September.
“Coast products” the Share Holder of “Jafa” and “Bambi”
The “Coast products Ltd” company was registered on 31 May 2006 at P.O. Box 3152 Road Town, Tortola. Within the register of the British Virgin Islands, concealing the names of beneficiary owners, “Pod lupom” obtained only the name of the agent Sandra Vasquez, who works for the “Overseas Management Company Trust” which deals with registering companies trying to conceal their money flows.
The “Coast products” is not registered at the Central Register of the Commercial Court, and in Serbia it is registered as a small share-holder of “Umka”, ”Avala Ada”, “Jafa” from Crvenka, “Bambi” and several more smaller-sized companies. The Serbian Agency for Commercial Registers holds no data on this firm from the exotic islands.
On 01 October 2007 the Land Registry Office registered the British Virgin Island-based company as the owner of Villa Ivanović, to be followed two days later by the registration to Aco Đukanović. The registrars who assessed well which order of priority should be taken in consideration of the two applications for the same property received on the same day were Snežana Perivan and Vesko Jovićević recently convicted in Podgorica High Court for taking bribe in other cases.
As she explained for “Pod lupom”, the lawyer Zorica Đukanović was not authorised by her clients to talk of the 2007 deal, and no reply came to the written invitation for a conversation sent to Aco Đukanović.
Off the record, several lawyers claim for “Pod lupom” that the actions of their colleague are legally based. There are no hindrances for a lawyer to make a contract for both parties to the procedure, this happens in practice – they all agree. Officially, out of professional fairness, they do not wish to talk about it, although they admit that the whole deal surrounding the change in ownership of the palace is rather dubious for a simple reason that it is not clear why “Galenika“ did not engage directly with Aco Đukanović, but relinquished the €743,000 to a Sofia.
Mila RADULOVIĆ
