In December, the Privatization Council paid money from the budget for legal and consulting services, but refuses to tell to whom and for what work
At the end of December, the Privatization and Capital Investment Council paid nearly million Euros for legal services, but this Government body refuses to tell to which lawyer or law office, and for which money such amount from the budget is paid.
According to Vijesti, a transaction worth over €900,000 was paid between 21st and 25th December 2017.
The Government’s Public Relations Bureau did not submit answers to Vijesti, and data was also not provided to the Network for Affirmation of NGO Sector (MANS) based on the Law on Free Access to Information, emphasizing that is the data marked by the Government with “degree of secrecy internal.”
MANS requested data on payments to privatization consultants for the last three months of 2017. The Privatization Council approved a partial insight into the data for October and December (all information for which the government has determined the degree of secrecy internal was deleted) and declined to submit data for November.
At the head of the Government’s Privatization and Capital Investment Council is the Prime Minister Duško Marković.
MANS Media Coordinator Snežana Bajčeta believes that “it is indicative that the Government made decision on denying the access to a part of data immediately after MANS requested this information in accordance with the Law on Free Access to Information (FAI)”.
According to her, in citing the reasons for such decision there is no explanation “for what exact reason one part of payments for consulting and legal services can and the other cannot be public”.
“We are facing controversial, general and vague exclusions that were added to the first Article of the Law on FAI last year. The concept of excluding all “information that should be kept secret” leads to undermining the entire Law and calls into question constitutional provisions on access to information and international standards which Montenegro is obligated to abide“, Bajčeta said.
She points out that this in practice allows denial of the public’s right to know in any case when a body prescribes the obligation of keeping a secret, since then the requested information is not covered by the Law on FAI, which should be regulated according to all international standards.
“Among payments for which the insight is allowed, we see that on December 25 alone, the Privatization Council made two payments for legal services in the total amount of €240,000. The contradictory nature of this law and its lack of harmonization with the Constitution and international standards that precisely regulate the exercise of the public’s right to know, enable that on the basis of ad hoc decisions of certain bodies, along with incomprehensible and often incomplete explanations, the public’s right to know is increasingly denied. Therefore, it is necessary to amend the existing law as soon as possible,” Bajčeta concluded.
- €85.3 thousand was paid in October for consulting services. During December, apart from nearly €1 million of secret transactions, over €270,000 was paid for legal services and over €65,000 for consulting services. According to data provided to MANS by the Council, there are also two secret payments for consulting services paid from citizens’ money between December 25 and December 31.
- “Hiding data when it comes to the privatization process is particularly problematic considering that this area has been continuously described by the European Commission as particularly vulnerable to corruption for years. There are rare examples of completely open and successful privatizations in Montenegro, and such Council decisions are by no means a contribution to changing of such situation,” Bajčeta stated.
Tina Popović
Text was published in Independent Daily Vijesti on July 15, 2018
