Although in 2015 Vesna Medenica, the President of the Supreme Court, concluded a land sale agreement with the company “Lolkan Investments Montenegro” worth about €140 thousand, there is no trace of the transaction in the company’s books, the latest data from the MANS Investigative Centre show.
Vesna Medenica, predsjednica Vrhovnog suda Crne Gore
Vesna Medenica kept secret key details of the sale of over 27,000 m2 of land in the village of Ravni, Municipality of Kolašin, until the MANS Investigative Centre revealed to the public that a scheme of affiliated companies of a controversial businessman was hiding behind Lolkan and, according to Medenica, a close friend of hers, Zoran Bećirović. Medenica was paid on this occasion from a loan obtained by Lolkan from Bećirović’s Cypriot company “Caldero Trading Limited“.
However, there is no increase in real estate in financial statements of Lolkan for 2015 compared to existing real estate, which would have been the case if this company had recorded in the books of account the purchase of land from Medenica. This is similar to the financial statements of this company for 2016, 2017 and 2018.
Data from the books of account show that this company owns only real estate entered by Katun (another Bećirović’s company) as a founding stake in Lolkan, and that the land purchased from Medenica has not been incorporated into the company’s official finances at all.
In addition, Bećirović did not report his trade with Vesna Medenica to the Kolašin Secretariat of Finance, Property and Economic Development in order to calculate his real estate tax. Data obtained by the MANS Investigative Centre from the Kolašin Secretariat show that Lolkan never officially reported the land it had purchased from Medenica.
This Secretariat provided MANS with documents confirming that the institution could not calculate the annual tax on the parcels purchased from Medenica because Lolkan did not even list them as its property in its annual tax return. We received the same answer for the last calculation which referred to 2018.
Lolkan company registered on Vesna Medenica’s land in mid-2015, as stated by the decision of the Kolašin Real Estate Administration. This legal work obliged Lolkan to inform the Kolasin Secretariat of Finance of this transaction by filing the correct tax return, which was clearly not done.
Such behaviour by Bećirović raises further doubts about the complete deal with the President of the Supreme Court, who has been hiding for more than four years that she used to do business with, as she says, a close friend through a scheme of companies and loans from Cyprus.
After more than a month since MANS revealed that the President of the Supreme Court had sold her property, Vesna Medenica continues to refuse to reveal the background to her business relationship with Bećirović and why it took a seemingly simple day-to-day business transaction between friends to be done through a network of related companies.
Dejan Milovac
MANS Investigative Centre
She sold the land because of the children
Responding to MANS’ investigation, Vesna Medenica said that in 2015 she sold the land to Bećirović below price to “secure the future of her children.” A recent MANS’ investigation found that Vesna Medenica’s son made more than € 200,000 in 2013 by selling family inheritance, which Medenica also failed to report to the competent authorities. Since that transaction, Miloš Medenica has purchased two apartments in an exclusive settlement below Gorica hill.
Miloš Medenica
Material security of daughter of the President of the Supreme Court was paid directly by the citizens of Montenegro, because Vesna Medenica gave her the apartment she had received from the state under favourable terms. Subsequently, Medenica became the beneficiary of another €40,000 housing loan to renovate the house she inherited.
Land purchased through loan from “Caldera“
Responding to MANS’ investigation, Zoran Bećirović’s legal representative, lawyer Zoran Čolović, confirmed that Medenica was paid not from the funds of the Lolkan company but from a loan from the end owner, Cypriot “Caldera“. In his response, Čolović claims that financial statements show that Lolkan paid Medenica through its bank account.
However, in financial statements of Lolkan, not only for 2015 when the land was purchased, but for the entire period to date, there is no trace of that transaction, nor has the company increased the value of the real estate it owns.
