Today, MANS asked the Special State Prosecutor, Milivoje Katnić, to urgently inform the public on the results of an investigation on suspicions that the ruling party financed its election campaign from illegal funds.
Special State Prosecutor, Milivoje Katnić
The Special Prosecutor’s Office formed the case back in April 2018 after the MANS Investigative Centre published a story about suspicious donations by natural persons to the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) during the 2016 parliamentary election campaign. Data obtained by MANS show that there was serious suspicion that money from unknown funds had been introduced into official flows of the political campaign through fictitious donations, in this case by the poorest inhabitants of Vrela Ribnička settlement in Podgorica.
For almost two years, the Prosecutor’s Office has been conducting investigation, the results of which are unknown to the public.
The public still has no information about whether the Special Prosecutor’s Office and to what extent asserted claims by the president of Atlas Group, Duško Knežević, that he had illegally funded DPS, and that he had given money to both Milo Đukanović and his party’s treasurer, Milka Vujović.
At the beginning of last year, answering questions from journalists, Đukanović himself confirmed that Knežević was a donor: “Everything that was done ended up at the appropriate address in the Democratic Party of Socialists, i.e. in the accounting. It was carefully recorded there, and the reports that state authorities required were submitted to them.”
The Special Prosecutor’s Office had no reaction to this Đukanović’s open confession that there had been funds not reported to the competent authorities, at least not the one expected from an institution independent of political influence.
Latest data published by MANS on the unexplained wealth of Milka Vujović, an employee in DPS accounting, along with the fact that the party continues to remain silent about how its employee acquired numerous valuable properties, further confirm suspicions about the way the ruling party is financed.
The lack of concrete actions and the passiveness of the Special Prosecutor’s Office when it comes to suspicions of electoral corruption are particularly problematic in the election year. This sends a very dangerous message that electoral corruption in Montenegro is unpunished and that the Prosecutor’s Office is no obstacle to the continuation of such practice.
Dejan Milovac
MANS
