We are surprised by the claims of the Minister of Capital Investments, Mladen Bojanić, that Milo Đukanović’s regime concluded a fair and legal contract on oil exploration, and protected the public interest, even though all other major deals were made with corruption.
The contract was not audited, and the public has recently learned that the job was given to companies registered only for the needs of the project, according to the recipe used for the privatization of Aluminium Plant Podgorica, as well as numerous other companies sent by such “domestic” actions into insolvency or bankruptcy.
We wonder whether Minister Bojanić is really so naive as to believe that DPS did not profit only from the oil business, or has some other reasons and motives to fight so hard to continue the implementation of that suspicious contract without any prior verification.
We believe that it is one thing whether Montenegro should put the tourism sector at risk in an attempt to find oil, and quite another whether the new government should do so in the manner and under the conditions set by DPS.
We are very concerned by the fact that the Ministry of Capital Investments uses almost identical arguments to defend this extremely non-transparent deal as the previous government, for which it claims has left behind a “scorched earth”.
Minister Bojanić has shown continuity compared to previous ministers, Branimir Gvozdenović especially, in relation to the non-governmental sector as well, but also to all citizens of the coastline, whose existence can be endangered by the smallest accident with oil. The new minister also claimed that the contract was concluded with the Italian-Russian consortium, as well as his predecessors, and they turn out to be offshore companies registered in the Netherlands, which did not even participate in the tender.
At the same time, Minister Bojanić and his staff, who were on the payroll of oil companies until a month ago, claim that these companies will control themselves, because Montenegro has only one inspector in charge of that. However, the minister does not mention that the heads of one of these companies have been accused of corruption in Italy, attempt to illegally influence the judiciary, wiretapping of journalists and enormous environmental devastation, while the other company is blacklisted by the United States.
We are extremely disappointed by the blanket statements from that ministry about the alleged costs in case of termination of that contract, which are not based on any serious analyses and estimates, but are inflated overnight from 30, 40 up to 100 million euros. We heard such claims from the previous government as well, while the citizens continuously paid the price of their corruption.
This behaviour of Minister Bojanić is extremely symptomatic, bearing in mind that he stated that he would not question the corruption in the construction of the highway whose kilometre is the most expensive in the world, even though the tycoons of the previous government extracted over half a billion euros. Following the example of his predecessors, since taking over the office, he found that the job was transparent, while from the opposition benches, he claimed that it was a noose around the neck of citizens for the sake of enriching individuals close to the former government. He now also convinces us that DPS’ oil contract is a deal that will pay off for Montenegro.
We call on the Government and the Prime Minister Krivokapić to urgently suspend the implementation of contracts with the offshore companies concluded by the former regime, and to engage independent experts in cooperation with the European Union to analyse and evaluate that deal.
Otherwise, a change of government can only mean a change of pockets into which the benefits of corruption flow, and not a sincere break with the practices of the previous regime promised by Krivokapić and all the parties that support him.
MANS
