Thanks to a business arrangement between his daughter and “Bemax” company, Slavoljub Stijepović, a long-time government official suspected of money laundering, was at the centre of a conflict of interest worth over 15 million Euros, according to documentation obtained by the MANS Investigative Centre.
In early May 2015, an exchange of real estate was agreed between the daughter of Slavoljub Stijepović, Dragana Stijepović, now Ivanović, and the construction company “Bemax”. The contract provided for Dragana to replace a 70m2 apartment in the settlement of Podgorica called Malo Brdo for a new 120m2 apartment in the so-called “Tološi Apartments” built by the “Bemax” company.
“Tološki apartmani”
Slavoljub Stijepović was obliged to pay the area difference of 50m2 in the amount of €50 thousand, i.e. €1000 per each m2. In this way, both sides agreed that Dragana’s apartment was worth 70 thousand, and Bemax’s €120 thousand.
Agreement on the exchange of real estate
However, an analysis by the MANS Investigative Centre shows that the daughter of Slavoljub Stijepović was the only one who benefited from this real estate exchange. Namely, couple of years after the exchange, “Bemax” sold Dragana Ivanović’s apartment for only €56 thousand, i.e. 14 thousand less than the apartment was valued during the exchange.
This, as it turns out, is only part of the money forgiven through the real estate business to the Stijepović family.
While Dragana’s apartment was overpriced in the exchange, Bemax’s luxury three-bedroom apartment was greatly under-priced. A search of ads on sale of real estate in Bemax’s building near Tološi Forest shows that the price per square meter of the apartment in the building ranges from 1,600 to over €2,000, which is significantly more than 1,000 euros per 1m2, which was the worth of its apartment estimated by Bemax during the exchange with Stijepović family.
If we take the minimum price in this range (1,600 Eur/m2), the calculation shows that the apartment that Dragana Ivanović acquired through the exchange was actually worth €192 thousand. When 56 thousand is deducted from this amount which is the real value of her apartment, as well as 50 thousand given based on the difference in square meters, we come to amount of minimum €86 thousand which Bemax practically forgave the daughter of Slavoljub Stijepović when she agreed to such exchange.
How is the difference of 50 thousand euros paid?
Although the real estate exchange agreement stated that the difference in price of 50 thousand would be paid by Slavoljub Stijepović, according to the statement from his office, this did not happen. Less than a month since the signing of the agreement, Dragana Ivanović and Bemax signed an annex extending the deadline for payment of the missing €50 thousand. When asked where this money came from, Stijepović’s office presented the journalist of the daily newspaper “DAN” with a payment slips by which Dragana Ivanović paid money to “Bemax”.
The amount of € 50 thousand was paid through ten individual transactions of € 5,000 each, in a period of only 15 days – from May 10 to May 25, 2018. Although they initially claimed that this money was secured from a loan and with assistance of the family of Dragana Ivanović’s husband, Stijepović’s office did not wish to answer the question which bank provided the loan, and was the amount. We did not get an answer to the question why the debt of € 50 thousand had to be settled through ten individual transactions over a period of only two weeks.
The office informed us that Dragana Ivanović is no longer a member of the household of the public official Slavoljub Stijepović, and that there is no legal obligation to declare property and income in this regard. However, when she left her father’s household, Dragana Ivanović did not cease to be a related party pursuant to the Article 6 of the Law on Prevention of Corruption.
Exchange of apartments, then contracts for bypass road worth €15 million
Following the agreement on the exchange of apartments, Dragana Ivanovć became a related party with a private interest in the company Bemax, on the basis of the debt of € 50 thousand which she owed, at least formally, for the apartment.
The Law on Prevention of Corruption (Article 14) explicitly prohibits for a public authority in which a public official performs a public function to conclude an agreement with a company in which this public official or a related party has a private interest.
However, this did not prevent Slavoljub Stijepović from concluding as many as two construction agreements worth over €15 million with the Bemax company.
The first agreement was concluded on May 9, 2018, just one day before Dragana Ivanović paid the first of ten tranches in the amount of € 5.000 to Bemax. The agreement worth € 9.8 million entails the construction of the first and third section of the “Southwest Bypass” in Podgorica.
The second agreement was signed with the consortium “Crnagoraput-Bemax”, worth 5.7 million and refers to the construction of the second section of the bypass. This agreement was signed on May 23, 2018, just a few days before Dragana Ivanović fully settled her debt towards Bemax.
The Law on Prevention of Corruption obliged Stijepović to report this conflict of interest, i.e. the fact that his daughter had a private interest in Bemax. Considering that both agreements were signed by Stijepović himself, it is clear that this conflict of interest remained unreported to the competent authorities.
It remains unclear why Stijepović hid the apparent conflict of interest, but also why Bemax knowingly agreed to an unfavourable real estate exchange with Stijepovic’s daughter.
Dejan Milovac
Lazar Grdinić
MANS Investigative Centre
Relatives gave an apartment in Budva as a present
This is not the first time that the real estate of Slavoljub Stijepović’s daughter has attracted public attention. Just one month before the exchange of Podgorica’s apartment with Bemax, Dragana Ivanović registered a two-bedroom apartment in the very centre of Budva. The apartment worth around € 150,000 was not reported by Stijepović to the then Commission for the Prevention of Conflict of Interest, while Slavoljub Stijepović claimed that Dragana had received the property as a present from relatives from abroad.
Audi, apartment and garages purchased from unreported inheritance
MANS Investigative Centre recently published data on the assets of Slavoljub’s wife, Ljiljana, who spent over € 215,000 to buy real estate and a luxury Audi SUV, which were funds not reported in the official property file. This money was then justified by the alleged inheritance and savings, although none of this was recorded as official income in any of the reports.
Waiting for completion of the investigation from his workplace
Slavoljub Stijepović is a long-time state official and distinguished member of DPS. Since February this year, he is suspected for criminal offense of “money laundering through aiding and abetting”, after a video released by businessman Duško Knežević showed Stijepović taking an envelope with €97.500, suspected of having been spent on DPS’ campaign for the 2016 parliamentary elections. Suspicion that he committed serious crimes did not affect Stijepović’s loss of public support by his party’s first man, and he was not suspended from the post as the Secretary General of the President: “First of all, as before, we will wait for the State Prosecutor’s Office to do its work. I believe we have witnessed many investigations being opened and then closed, to indict and not result in convictions. I urge that a new level of democratic culture would require patience regarding the whole case”, Montenegro’s President Milo Đukanović said in late October.
