Most of the public institutions has been seriously violating the Law on Financing of Political Entities and Election Campaigns, as they are not appropriately publishing information on pre-election expenses, shows the current monitoring conducted by MANS.
Since the elections were called, MANS has been monitoring information on pre-election expenses published by over 60 institutions which are the biggest beneficiaries of the state budget, mostly the ministries and other institutions of the executive power, as well as the legislature, judiciary and a number of independent institutions at the central level. On the grounds of the conducted monitoring, we have identified numerous violations, namely inadequate publishing of information on how the institutions spend state money in the pre-election campaign.
So far, the monitoring included first seven weeks after the elections were called, during which the institutions, according to the Law on Financing of Political Entities and Election Campaigns, were obliged to proactively publish a large number of various information, including statement of accounts, travelling expenses, social welfare date, treasury statement etc.
Most of the institutions merely satisfy requirements and publish documents, but in two thirds of those cases such documents do not contain key information based on which it could be seen if there has been any misuse of state funds for electoral and party purposes, which makes legal provisions completely pointless.
One of the biggest issues is publishing of statement of accounts of the institutions – in over 60 percent of cases, those statements do not contain the purpose of payment, which is the crucial information from which one can see what the money was used for, or if there have been any suspicious transactions, including those that might be used for buying votes.
When it comes to mileage logs, in most cases the institutions do not publish complete information on the vehicle movement, time it spent on the road, nor the information on the total consumption. Thus, the public cannot determine whether a state-owned vehicle is used for party purposes, which is the essence of the Law on Financing of Political Entities and Election Campaigns.
During the first five weeks after the elections were called, the institutions that violated the Law on Financing of Political Entities and Election Campaigns the most, as they were not publishing adequate information, or published them in an inadequate form, which was not in accordance with the law, are the following: Investment and Development Fund of Montenegro, Real Estate Administration, Veterinary Directorate, Water Directorate and Property Administration.
Due to all violations of the Law on Financing of Political Entities that have been identified so far, MANS has filed nearly 500 indictments to the Agency for Prevention of Corruption against the institutions that violated the law, for each of the categories where inadequate publishing of information was noticed. Despite the fact that the first set of indictments was filed at the end of July this year, the Agency has not given us any feedback on whether the indictments have been processed or if the violators have been adequately sanctioned.
MANS
