The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Milutin Simović, deceived the public and tried to hide the payments of over € 630 thousand, which his department distributed to the consultants in the first half of the election year.
Milutin Simović
On July 22 this year, MANS asked the Ministry for detailed information on the use of water management programmes for consulting services, including invoices and contracts with suppliers.
In response to the request for information, Simović claims that: “no payments were made based on consulting services from the Water Management programme during 2020.”
Response of the Ministry of Agriculture
Documents submitted to MANS by the Ministry of Finance, which contain data on spending of all budget users, show that Simović tried to hide enormous payments by misinforming the public.
That documentation shows that from February until submitting of the request for information, i.e. on July 22, the Ministry of Agriculture spent € 636 thousand for consulting services from the water management programme.
In February, out of a total of €344 thousand, around €335 thousand was paid through only two transactions to accounts of unknown recipients in the same bank. In March and April, a total of € 27 thousand was paid, and in May over € 130 thousand, of which as much as € 117 thousand through one transaction to an account in CKB bank. After the announcement of the elections, at the end of June this year, around € 120 thousand was paid, again to an account in CKB bank, and again through only one payment.
Simović’s department continued with the payment of consulting services from that programme, so even after response submitted to MANS, the costs for those purposes in July and August were over € 80 thousand.
From all the above, it can be seen that the costs from February to mid-August 2020 are three times higher than last year in the same period, when around € 220 thousand were spent for water management consultants.
Although these data were obtained thanks to the Ministry of Finance, this department is trying to prevent MANS from determining whether one of the election laws has been violated. Namely, the Law on Financing of Political Entities and Election Campaigns stipulates that state institutions shall be prohibited from monthly spending higher than the average monthly spending in the previous six months until the day of holding of the elections that were called on June 20.
In order to determine whether there were pre-election abuses, it is necessary to disclose all data for January this year in order to be able to calculate the average six-month spending.
However, the Ministry of Finance is persistently withholding data for January this year, despite numerous requests for information and decisions on appeals. MANS informed the Minister of Finance that in that way they restrict them in monitoring the election laws, but the data were not submitted.
Due to all this, there is a well-founded suspicion that this is a violation of the law – abuse of state resources for election purposes. Although the Ministry of Agriculture hides payments of hundreds of thousands of Euros, and the Ministry of Finance publishes only partial data on budget spending, the Agency for Prevention of Corruption has not performed control and supervision in either of these two government departments.
MANS Investigative Centre
Most payments to unknown persons
Over € 640 thousand was paid from the water management programme to the accounts of unknown persons in a commercial bank Crnogorska komercijalna banka (CKB) for consulting services. Around €14 thousand was paid to the accounts of the companies, while a total of € 6.5 thousand was paid to the Municipality of Mojkovac. Other payments range from € 400 to over € 8,000, and are accompanied by the payment of taxes and contributions, which leads to the conclusion that these are the fees of natural persons.
