Latest announcement by the Agency for Prevention of Corruption confirms that oral hearing in the case it illegally leads against Vanja Ćalović Marković was not scheduled to establish facts and evidence, but was only formal in order to make a political decision previously announced by the Agency. Let me remind that the Agency, immediately after receiving the verdict by the Administrative Court, publicly announced that they would adopt another decision that Vanja Ćalović Marković violated the law, so it is obvious that they did not schedule the hearing in order to properly and accurately determine the factual situation and examine the evidence on the basis of which the decision should be made.
This is precisely the reason why the Agency unlawfully excluded the public from the procedure and did not allow the media to follow the course of the debate. The Agency’s statement that the procedure for verifying data from reports by the public officials is not available to the public is completely unfounded and absurd. An oral hearing was scheduled yesterday at the Agency’s premises regarding the procedure against Vanja Ćalović Marković, not regarding checking of data from the report. The procedure for verifying data from the report is a completely different type of procedure that is carried out by the Agency without debate by collecting data on property and income by the state authorities and legal entities, and this procedure is regulated by a completely different section of the Law on Prevention of Corruption. After all, these are Vanja Ćalovic Marković’s personal data concerning her earnings and she made them public to show that the Agency’s allegations are unfounded and false in this regard.
Finally, the level of expertise and capacity of the Agency may best be reflected in allegation that it is contrary to the law that Vanja Ćalović Marković came with her legal representative. What is remarkable is the Agency’s persistence to deny Vanja Ćalović Marković all fundamental rights that she holds in the procedure, and now even the right to come to the hearing with a lawyer, especially having in mind the fact that this procedure has been led for two years and the Agency is yet to announce in what way she violated the law and what is the evidence to confirm it.
Veselin Radulović, lawyer from Podgorica
