Today, MANS called on the Ministry of Capital Investments (MCI), headed by the Minister Mladen Bojanic, to withdraw from the public debate the proposal of the concession act for stone extraction from the site Platac in Krimovica until the actual situation on the ground is determined, as well as the facts related to the previous use of that quarry by the company “Carinvest”.
Carevic and Bojanic
Namely, the draft concession act completely ignores the fact that this company has been exploiting stone at that site for 15 years, and that Carević family already built facilities on the plots offered under concession, which puts their company in a privileged position compared to other participants in the future “public bidding”.
In the draft of this document, MCI treats this site as a completely new stone deposit, and even on the orthoimage submitted to it by the Cadastre and State Property Administration, “it does not see” that “Platac” is already a formed quarry, with functional plants and infrastructure.
The document also states that only geological examinations were performed on Krimovica, as if it were a brand new site, and not a quarry from which the Carević family have been extracting tens of thousands of cubic meters of the construction raw materials for years. It is also stated that an asphalt road built by the company “Carinvest” for its needs leads to the “bearing”, but it is not stated what “needs” the Carević family had at that location so far.
“Platac” quarry is located in the immediate vicinity of the place where the mayor of Budva, Marko Carević, illegally built an agricultural farm and usurped nearly half a million square meters of state land.
“Carinvest” company received the first concession for the exploitation of stone at the “Platac” site at the beginning of 2006, for a period of 10 years. During most of the time of this concession, Carević’s facilities at that site worked without the necessary permits. Namely, according to the data of the former Ministry of Sustainable Development, Carević requested and received a building permit for the construction of the plant only in the middle of 2010, and a use permit only in 2015.
The following year, 2016, the government of Duško Marković decided to extend this concession for another 5 years maximum, as allowed by the law. During that time, Carević built an entire plant for stone processing and the production of concrete and asphalt in Krimovica.
Part of these plants was also built on a land that in the meantime became the private property of Carević, which is now an integral part of the future concession agreement being prepared by the MCI. Carević thus ensured that even in the case of not winning such an organized public tender, his family would still benefit from the exploitation of stone from that site.
Duration of the concession has been increased to a maximum period of 30 years by a new act proposed by the MCI, which is three times more than what the government of Duško Marković approved for Carević.
In addition to the deadline for exploitation, with the new concession act, MCI has increased the amount of stone that can be excavated annually, thus, from the current contracted 45,000 m3, the figure has been increased to a minimum of 60,000 m3 per year.
All of the above speaks in favour of the suspicion that the public debate on the concession act and the future public call to tender are actually just a form that is to be satisfied by the MCI in order to fake the transparency of the work that the company “Carinvest” will actually get.
Such manner of managing state resources is a remnant of the practice from the “best years” of the previous government, from which only the privileged individuals and their companies benefited, while its continuation produces a new generation of “tycoons close to the authorities”.
It is the examples such as this one of Carević and his illegal activities, which have been going on smoothly for years regardless of who is in power, that show that there is still no political will to ensure equality before the law and that no party or other interest should ever again be above the public interest.
Dejan Milovac
MANS Investigative Centre
