Sreten Radonjic – Director of Agency for Prevention of Corruption
Director of the Agency for Prevention of Corruption Sreten Radonjic has made the Law on Financing of Political Entities and Election Campaigns completely ineffective by deciding on MANS’s complaints, as on the basis of those complaints he enacted utterly illegal acts which allow institutions to conceal information on the pre-election spending of the budget.
Yet, such illegal decision-making by the Agency Director is not surprising, bearing in mind that he is a protégé of Dusko Markovic, the second most influential person from the Montenegrin Government and the ruling party, who made Radonjic the head of the Agency, only in order to ridicule the law and to ensure that the institutions and responsible persons in them do not suffer any consequences for its violation.
That is why today MANS filed first set of complaints with the Administrative Court against such acts of the Agency for Prevention of Corruption which legalize the illegal behavior of the institutions that conceal or inadequately publish statements of account, mileage logs and other documents which containing information on how to state money is being used during the election campaign.
Adopting the controversial acts, the director of the Agency has showed that not only is he unable to implement the Law on Financing of Political Entities and Electoral Campaigns, but also that he has no elementary knowledge of legal procedures. The acts that Radonjic passed do not have any legal form of resolution or decision whatsoever – they are merely legally illiterate acts that do not meet the elementary procedural requirements to be considered legitimate.
Therefore, we are confident that the controversial acts will be rendered void by the Administrative Court, which will represent an additional confirmation of illegal and politicized work of Dusko Markovic’s exponent who chairs the Agency for Prevention of Corruption.
Bearing in mind the manner in which Dusko Markovic made Radonjic the head of the Agency, as well as his previous work resume heavily burdened with the lack of any result, we did not expect that he would respond to our requests in any other manner. Therefore, this is an opportunity for the Montenegrin judiciary to show if it has risen to the occasion and provide conditions for the fight against political corruption.
The data that must indisputably be made public on the grounds of several laws are being hidden by institutions in cooperation with Dusko Markovic’s protégé, who is the head of the Agency. The only rational reason for doing so is clearly a need to hide the information on budget expenditure in the election period and potential misuse for the party purposes.
However, all data on spending of the public money by the various institutions which are the budget beneficiaries and which hide those data, must be made public regardless of the elections, according to the Law on Free Access to Information, which enables citizens to know how public money is spent by any government body at any time. Therefore, MANS, in accordance with the Law on Free Access to Information, requested all the institutions that hide information from the public to deliver information on the spending of public money during the election campaign. The information we requested will unquestionably have to be published by the institutions, since Sreten Radonjic cannot protect them from violations of the Law on Free Access to Information.
However, in order to try to ensure that the behavior of the Agency for Prevention of Corruption is in accordance with the law as well, we have filed and will continue to file complaints with the Administrative Court against all illegal acts and decisions made by the Agency. This will ensure jurisprudence, detect shortcomings in the work of institutions, as well as deficiencies in the interpretation of the legislation by the Agency, which provides institutions with an alibi for their illegal conduct.
On the other hand, we are confident that the Administrative Court will render void such illegal and elementary legally illiterate decisions of Mr. Radonjic, in order to finally end stultifying the Law on Financing of Political Parties and Electoral Campaigns as a key law to ensure that in the pre-election period the state money is not used for vote-buying and other electoral manipulation.
Vuk Maras
Monitoring Program Director
