In addition to the usual destinations of state officials such as Brussels, Munich, Berlin and Geneva, Montenegro’s state aircraft also flew to Palma de Mallorca last year. The General Secretariat refused to say why the state aircraft was used to travel to this exotic destination.
Palma de Mallorca is the capital city of Majorca, the largest island in the Spanish Balearic Islands, and in the summer it becomes the centre of 24/7 parties of the rich and famous from around the world. The airport in this city has over 27 million passengers annually, and during the tourist season, over 500 planes land at this airport daily.
One of these aircrafts in the mid-September last year was a jet of the Government of Montenegro, Lear Jet45, registration marks 4O-MNE, according to the data of MANS Investigative Centre.
Photographs and data obtained by MANS show that the government jet landed at Palma de Mallorca airport on September 13 last year at 7:14 PM and was parked the same day and the next day on a part of the airport for small aircrafts.
On September 15, the Government’s Lear Jet departed Spain at 4:44 PM and landed at Golubovci airport at 6:23 pm.
In mid-February, MANS asked the General Secretariat and the Government Bureau of Public Relations to answer the question of what was the purpose of the trip to the mentioned Spanish resort, and how much that flight cost Montenegrin citizens, but we received no answer, despite announcements that the answers would be sent within a “reasonable deadline”.
MANS Investigative Centre was also denied the answer on what was the purpose of the government’s flight to Malta in the beginning of this year when the state aircraft stayed on that island for ten days. Namely, the state aircraft flew from Podgorica to Malta on January 24, and returned only on February 3. According to official data from the websites of the Parliament, the Government and the President of Montenegro, there were no planned visits to Malta during that period.
Recently, we have had the opportunity to see that the world’s mondaine summer resorts are a frequent holiday destinations of top state and party officials, while the silence of the General Secretariat opens a room for suspicion that the state aircraft is used for this purpose.
According to the Instruction on conditions and method of using in possession of the General Secretariat of the Government, which was adopted in April 2015 on the basis of the Regulation on conditions and manner of using means of transport in the ownership of Montenegro, the state aircraft is used free of charge by the President of the state, the Prime Minister and the President of the Parliament.
The maintenance and use of state aircraft costs Montenegrin citizens costs annually around €700,000, while according to the data from the state budget, over two million Euros was allocated for this in the period from 2015 to 2017. The data on how much the General Secretariat allocated for flights of the Government’s jet during last year are still unknown.
Dejan Milovac
Biljana Matijašević
