In its reaction to the investigative story about the affairs of the Capital City Podgorica with the company “Toškovići”, whose owner was convicted of creating a criminal organization and tax evasion, the Agency for Construction and Development of Podgorica did not deny any of the facts presented by MANS.
Instead, the public was presented with a series of justifications that raise further suspicions about more than privileged status that the company “Toškovići” has in doing business with the Capital City.
Article 112 of the Law on Public Procurement gave the Agency for Construction and Development of Podgorica the opportunity to further verify the validity of documents submitted by Ivica Tošković as part of his bid, as well as the certificate of no criminal conviction, which was already five months old at the time of awarding the contract on reconstruction of the street “July 18”.
This is all the more so because the information about the prosecutorial affair “Vardar” and its participants was publicly available, including the information that Tošković was convicted in November last year. When, as a participant in the tender, there is a company whose owner is generally known to have been convicted, and he encloses a Certificate of no criminal conviction from last year, those are the circumstances that had to motivate the responsible municipal company to perform additional checks of documents “Toškovići” company submitted along with its offer.
There was the same situation in the case of the company’s contract with the city company “Vodovod i kanalizacija”, which will be terminated after MANS’ investigation, which unfortunately shows the pattern of behaviour of the Capital City when it comes to the public procurement system and spending of money of Podgorica’s citizens.
When it comes to delays in performing of works, the Agency states the reasons which, if the tender procedure had been well prepared, it had to consider and take into account when defining the legal deadline. When it comes to Veliše Mugoše Street, the Agency knew that there was a hill Gorica and the composition of the terrain, it knew that there were residential buildings, that some people lived there, as well as what is stated in the planning document for that location, which are just some of reasons that are by no means justification for months of delayed work.
Finally, in the absence of a line of argument, we accept the promise of the Capital City that it will inform the representatives of the international community about “what MANS is doing” as a confirmation of the correctness of our work and, despite the pressures of Mayor Ivan Vuković to which MANS has been recently exposed, we will continue to investigate how the money of all citizens is spent and point to cases of corruption in Montenegro.
Dejan Milovac
Investigative Centre
MANS
