The director of the MANS Investigative Centre, Dejan Milovac, was awarded for a special contribution to investigative journalism in 2020 and released files on the affairs of the President of the Municipality of Budva. The competition is organized under the auspices of the European Union, which every year awards the best investigative stories in Montenegro.
In the period from February to May 2020, the Investigative Centre published a series of three investigative stories which revealed how the President of the Municipality of Budva, Marko Carević, violated laws with impunity for years in order to gain unlawful benefits for himself and related persons. The first story concerned the usurpation of nearly half a million square meters of the state property in Krimovica, the Municipality of Kotor, where an investigation found that state institutions had tolerated usurpation and illegal construction for years, including the Ministry of Finance, the Police Directorate, State Prosecutor’s Office, cadastre and construction inspection.
Further investigation showed that Carević received permission from the Ministry of Agriculture to register his farm, while another story from these files shows documentation on how the state helped Carević build and equip the illegal agricultural complex through subsidies and favourable loans.
The third story about Carević’s illegal business concerns public procurement in his municipality, where his company “Carinvest” participated in numerous tenders for the construction and rehabilitation of urban and rural roads as a covert subcontractor, renting its machinery to the company that formally signed contracts with him. The evidence obtained and presented within the story points to a textbook example of conflict of interest and corruption in the public procurement sector.
All three stories from the files are based on official documentation obtained based on the Law on Free Access to Information, collected data from the field, and interviews with sources. The investigation included a detailed analysis of the financial and tender documentation, as well field work, photographing, drone filming and interviews with relevant witnesses of these businesses.
MANS
