At its session held on July 23, the Government of Montenegro adopted the information instructing the Ministry of Finance to pay 13.5 thousand Euros from the current budget reserve to the company “Inpek” Podgorica for the bread that this company distributed to the citizens of the Podgorica’s town municipality Tuzi who were in quarantine in April this year.
Milutin Simović, chairman of NCB
Information from the session of the Government of Montenegro
That amount is only a part of the money that the Government spent from the state budget without previously conducted tender, and based on the decisions of the National Coordination Body (NCB), which adopts them behind closed doors and contrary to the public procurement procedure.
Namely, the Prime Minister Duško Marković announced during the Prime Minister’s Hour, held at the end of April in the Parliament of Montenegro, that everything that NCB has spent so far from donations will be covered from the state budget in order to direct all funds from donations to the construction of a new infectious diseases clinic.
According to the latest data from NCB, €1.7 million have been paid so far from the bank account where donations are collected, of which nearly 600 thousand were spent on the purchase of respirators, more than 200 thousand on equipping of temporary hospitals, while 315 thousand were redirected to the Red Cross of Montenegro, and the rest was spent on the procurement of tests for COVID19, food, and redirected at the request of donors to certain public health institutions.
Apart from the money that was forwarded to the Red Cross, the rest of the donated funds was spent in a procedure that was not completely open to the public, without a public tender and only based on the assessment of the operational headquarters and NCB itself.
Thus, “Glossary” company from Podgorica got a job worth more than half a million Euros, Farmont company € 170 thousand, and “Voli Trade” over € 100 thousand.
All that money that was spent contrary to the tender procedure, at least contrary to the one that was communicated with the public, will now be reimbursed from the state budget. All other state institutions announced tenders for emergency procurements in accordance with the Law on Public Procurement, which was not the case with NCB, which still has over seven million Euros of donations currently at its disposal on its account without any control.
Decisions on the spending of these funds were signed by Milutin Simović as the chairman of the body, but for now, there is no more detailed information on how NCB chose certain companies.
NCB’s decision on procurement of goods
MANS has asked for minutes from NCB’s sessions on several occasions before, but people within the state apparatus refuse to submit that documentation, or claim that they do not have it. It is the minutes and accompanying documentation that would show how NCB spends funds that will now be reimbursed from the pockets of citizens.
The majority of the leading staff of this body are members of the Government, who are also high-ranking officials of the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), and this type of money spending before the upcoming elections leaves a lot of room for manipulations.
Dejan Milovac
Investigative Centre
MANS
Red Cross the only one to conduct the public procurement procedure
That the public procurement procedure could still be carried out during the coronavirus epidemic is also shown by the example of the Red Cross, which spent the funds received as a donation from NCB after conducting the tender. Unlike NCB, there is available documentation on these procedures, which this institution submitted to MANS on the basis of the Law on Free Access to Information. Out of the 315 thousand that the Red Cross received from NCB, the largest part, over € 230 thousand, went to the “Voli Trade” company.
