Magyar Telekom admitted and accepted responsibility for the actions of its officials, including responsibility for signing a contract with Sigma through which payments were made to Ana Đukanović, which can be seen from the Agreement on suspended criminal prosecution, signed with the U.S. judicial authorities due to corruption during the purchase of telecommunication companies in Montenegro and Macedonia.
According to the charges of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a total of €7.3 million of bribe went to the accounts of four companies, behind which were Montenegrin officials. The consulting contracts aimed to disguise payments of Magyar Telekom to Montenegrin officials who provided them with two thirds of the shares of the Montenegrin company through the purchase of shares of minority shareholders.
Concerning specifically the deal with Sigma through which Đukanović was paid, Magyar Telekom admitted in this agreement that it was a payment of services in the amount of €580 thousand that were not actually provided, and that this payment was falsely presented as a cost for consulting services.
Also, in the indictment against Magyar Telekom, it is stated that this contract was made to hide payments to the “sister of a high Montenegrin official” through Sigma company. The indictment also confirms that the “sister” did not provide any services to Magyar Telekom or Telekom Crna Gora under that contract.
Describing the contract with Sigma, the agreement states that their purpose was to hide the identity of other parties, not to accurately describe the actual services to be provided, that the goal was to achieve business success, but that they were concluded after the relevant unforeseen costs were already covered by other service providers. It also states that the contract does not serve any legitimate business purpose, and is based on false confirmations of the results achieved and fabricated evidence of these results. “The services defined by these contracts are duplicated services previously provided to Magyar Telekom by the known parties at significantly lower prices,” the agreement states.
On the other hand, the Chief Special State Prosecutor, Milivoje Katnić, believed that Ana Đukanović nevertheless provided the services for which she was paid for and left her name out of the Montenegrin indictment. He justified this by claiming that it was a contract that was concluded after the privatization of Telekom Crna Gora.
Nevertheless, SEC indictment alleges that one of the heads of Magyar Telekom, Tamas Morvai, “signed a contract on behalf of Magyar Telekom’s subsidiary and antedated the contract”, and that the legal services that the “sister of an official” claimed that had been provided were instead provided by internal and regular external advisors to Magyar Telekom at much lower prices.
Ana Đukanović (then Kolarević), sister of Montenegrin President Milo Đukanović, who was the Prime Minister at the time of sale of Telekom, admitted that she had provided consulting services to Telekom via Sigma.
In TV show Živa istina in November 2012, she denied her participation in Telekom affair, because she did not work for the company during the privatization. She said she was working on the legal reorganization of the company after the privatization was completed. According to her, Telekom paid her €246,000 for these services through Sigma company, and she received that money in Montenegro through her account in Atlas bank.
At the beginning of the week, MANS sent a question to Ana Đukanović as to why she did not work with Telekom through her law firm, but through Sigma company, but there was no answer.
Biljana Matijašević
MANS Investigative Centre
Ties with Duško Knežević
Sigma company was founded in 2000 by Branislav Krtinić in New York. A few years later, Krtinić was appointed by the President of the Atlas Group, Duško Knežević, to be the director of his Montenegroexpress.
According to the records of the U.S. registry, Sigma was active for nearly ten years, then it was shut down in January 2010 when the U.S. investigators had already determined connections of that company and “a lawyer, sister of a high-ranking Montenegrin official” with criminal actions during the privatization of Telekom.
During the hearing of Magyar Telekom officials, on November 5, 6 and 7, 2013, the prosecutor asked them whether one of the lawyers was Kolarević, whether she and her colleague Martinović were associated with Milo Đukanović and Sigma, whether they had contact with him, whether they asked what kind of ties she had with Sigma, whether €580 thousand was paid to Sigma, whether they knew Veselin Barović – “a representatives of certain minority shareholders”.
All directors took the 5th amendment, i.e. they chose the right to silence. They also signed an agreement with the U.S. judicial authorities in 2017 and admitted corrupt payments to Macedonia, as SEC, in an effort to make the initiated litigation more efficient, gave up prosecution for corruption in Montenegro after it was admitted by Magyar Telekom.
Agreement with Deutsche Telekom
In attempts to cover up the undisputed involvement of Đukanović family in the Telekom affair, some media deliberately mislead the public by hiding the fact that Magyar Telekom made a special agreement with the judiciary authorities, by admitting the responsibility of its employees for corrupting of Montenegrin officials.
The agreement concluded by Deutsche Telekom concerned only the charges that, as the owner, it did not properly run the business books, failing to notice the activities of Magyar Telekom, which is why it was fined $ 4.36 million.
