The Parliament of Montenegro is yet another institution that hides information on corruption and protects the main actors of corruption in privatization of Montenegrin Telekom.
Namely, the Parliament of Montenegro rejected the requests of NGO MANS for submitting minutes from the sixth and seventh sessions of the Inquiry Committee for collecting information and facts on corruption in the privatization of Telekom Crna Gora. These sessions of the Inquiry Committee were held in July 2012 where the then Supreme State Prosecutor Ranka Čarapić, the then director of the Administration for Prevention of Money Laundering Predrag Mitrović, and the then Director of the Police Directorate Božidar Vuksanović were questioned. Thus, the Parliament of Montenegro decided to hide from the public what the heads of institutions in charge of detecting corruption had to say on corruption in the privatization of Telekom, with allegations that the sessions were held “in a room for reviewing materials marked with degree of secrecy”.
However, other sessions of the Inquiry Committee were also held in this room, but the Parliament of Montenegro only hides from the public the records from sessions where the heads of the State Prosecutor’s Office, the police and the Administration for Prevention of Money Laundering were questioned.
Apart from the fact that the law does not contain such absurd grounds for limiting access to information depending on the purpose of the premises where the meeting of a certain body is held, according to imperative legal provisions, the information requested cannot be secret at all and the public must be given access to such information.
Namely, the Law on Free Access to Information prescribes that access to information cannot be restricted if there is a prevailing public interest in publishing information. Under the same law, a prevailing public interest exists when the requested information contains information with reasonable grounds of corruption, abuse of authority in the exercise of a public function or suspicion that a criminal offense has been committed. In the concrete case, not only is there a suspicion of corruption, but by the final decisions of the competent authorities of the USA, it has been undisputedly established that bribes worth several million Euros were paid in the privatization of Telekom Crna Gora.
That is why the public must know what the heads of the State Prosecutor’s Office, the Administration for Prevention of Money Laundering and the Police Directorate did, and especially what they did not do in order to detect and prosecute corruption in the Telekom affair. Hiding this information is an additional reason and basis for the conclusion that these institutions, and now the Parliament of Montenegro as well, are doing everything to hide who took the bribe and where, in the end, 7.4 million worth of bribes went for the service of Magyar Telekom obtaining the desired two-thirds of Telekom’s shares under favourable conditions.
We remind that 14 years have passed since the €7.4 million worth of bribes was paid for the privatization of Telekom. Instead of identifying and prosecuting responsible persons, instead of final verdicts and confiscation of assets obtained by corruption, for all that time, we only saw the incredible persistence of institutions to hide all data on corruption and for the actors of corruption to avoid criminal liability. In addition to the State Prosecutor’s Office, the Police and the Administration for Prevention of Money Laundering, it seems that the Parliament of Montenegro apparently has the same task.
NGO MANS will undertake all legal actions in order to obtain the requested information on the corruption of the executive power of Montenegro, which has been legally established in the United States, while Montenegrin institutions have been trying to cover up for years. In the legal deadline, we will launch an administrative dispute against these illegal decisions of the Parliament of Montenegro, by which information on corruption at the highest level of executive power is hidden from the public.
NGO MANS legal representative:
Veselin Radulović, lawyer
