Statute of limitations is one of the most common reasons why the prosecution decides to drop the prosecution of suspects in serious crimes, including corruption and organized crime. The existing legal provisions of the Criminal Code of Montenegro, combined with insufficiently effective prosecution of criminal offenses, as well as their late detection, have led to a situation that even when detected, suspects are often not prosecuted, not because of their innocence, but because there is a limitation of prosecution.
It is no news that the prosecution does not have the capacity and political will to seriously address the problems of organized crime and grand corruption, which, bearing in mind the frequency of the prosecution’s initiatives, as well as the relative statute of limitations for certain offenses, opens a huge area of concern, with regard to the results of this institution.
Croatian Criminal Code prescribes the terms of limitation of eight to 40 years, but does not contain provisions on termination of prosecution limitation, unlike the Montenegrin version, according to which the statute of limitations interrupted by any action taken for the detection of criminal offenses or for the detection or prosecution of perpetrators, and the limitation period starts running again.
Because of all the aforesaid, including ineffective prosecutions or late apprehension that the crimes took place, MANS’s comments on the amendments to the Criminal Code, recommended the Ministry of Justice to consider the Croatian model of limitation periods.
MANS also proposed to the Ministry to expand the list of offenses that do not expire in the amendments to the Criminal Code. For example, the existing Code provides that no statute of limitations applies to the criminal offense of active and passive bribery in the economy, but we do not see why it would not be applied to the active and passive bribery in the public administration, which is more likely to be a direct harm to the public interest.
In addition, MANS proposed to the Ministry to expand the list of criminal offenses against electoral rights, even more so because it is evident that the results of the prosecution in the fight against the political and electoral corruption are particularly below the already poor average in the prosecution of those crimes. As the consequence, this kind of corruption has a direct impact on almost all spheres of life in the long run, so we deemed it necessary to prescribe longer limitation periods, so that the future, more independent prosecution would have a chance to protect the public interest.
In cooperation with the colleagues from the Women’s Safe House, Green Home, Association of Youth with Disabilities and the NGO Stecajci (Bankrupt Companies in Montenegro), MANS has submitted a set of comments requesting from the Ministry to expand the list of offenses for which there is no statute of limitations to murder, torture, child pornography, offenses against official duty and other acts of corruption, as well as to the crimes of violation of equality, environmental pollution, failure to take environmental protection measures and other offenses against the environment.
Bearing in mind the current capacity of the prosecution to effectively deal with the most serious crimes, we believe that it is necessary to amend the Criminal Code in the part of the statute of limitations of criminal prosecution, in order to ensure that all those who violated the law answer in an appropriate manner.
MANS
