“We asked the Agency to prosecute Baković in accordance with the Law on Prevention of Corruption and inform the public about that procedure. It is important to note that the Agency is the one that should be the first address for recognizing changes in the lifestyle of state officials, with special attention to those public functions that are extremely vulnerable to corruption and the influence of organized criminal groups”, Milovac said.
Source: Independent Daily Vijesti
The Administrative Court annulled the decision of the Agency for Prevention of Corruption (APC), which rejected as unfounded the initiative of the Network for Affirmation of NGO Sector (MANS) to determine how the former high official of the Police Administration, Enis Baković, acquired a plot and a cottage in Žabljak.
Enis Baković, Photo: Boris Pejović
The agency rejected MANS’s initiative as unfounded, under the pretext that the Law on Prevention of Corruption came into force on January 1, 2016.
The Administrative Court instructed the Agency to repeat the procedure and issue a new, legal decision.
The court reiterated once again the position that the Agency is the legal successor, and thus takes over the “rights, obligations, documentation, registers…” of the Commission for Prevention of Conflicts of Interest.
MANS’ initiative, which was rejected by the Agency, states that Baković bought a cottage and a plot in Žabljak in 2015, area of 58 and 267 square meters, but that he did not report a loan or savings that year, and that his income was not enough to buy that real estate.
In the initiative from 2020, MANS also specifies that in 2015, Baković took over the position of Deputy State Prosecutor in the Basic State Prosecutor’s Office, and that he earned 13,296 euros during that year.
”In the specific case, the defendant (the Agency for Prevention of Corruption) did not reject the submitted request as incomplete or incomprehensible, but referred to Article 38 of the Law on Prevention of Corruption and issued a decision rejecting the request as unfounded, finding that it stems from the contested decision, referring to the provision of Article 78, which regulates the issue of the competence of the Agency. Acting in the stated manner, the defendant violated the rules of procedural law, given that the adoption of the disputed decision was not preceded by the procedure of establishing the facts relevant to the decision on the merits”, the judgment of the Administrative Court reads.
Director of the MANS Investigative Centre, Dejan Milovac, told “Vijesti” that this is yet another judgement of the Administrative Court which once again shows that the lack of political will is still a key issue in the work of the Agency, as well as a confirmation of the European Commission’s findings in the latest progress report on Montenegro – that this institution still has a problem with selectivity in the treatment of public officials”.
”APC once again declared itself non-competent to act, although the Administrative Court has several times previously passed final judgments confirming that the Agency is the legal successor of the previous Commission for Prevention of Conflicts of Interest, and that it must act in cases related to the period before 2016. With a similar explanation, APC has already declared itself non-competent in several cases related to unexplained property and gifts of top state officials, including Montenegro’s President Milo Đukanović, but also those against whom the competent State Prosecutor’s Office later filed charges precisely on suspicion of corruption”, Milovac said.
According to him, when it comes to the specific case of police official Enis Baković, whose name is mentioned in EUROPOL transcripts on police connections with the Kavači clan, “MANS’ investigation showed that at the time of buying the disputed cottage in Žabljak, he did not have an official reported income from which he could finance it”.
“That is why we asked the Agency to prosecute Baković in accordance with the Law on Prevention of Corruption and inform the public about that procedure. It is important to note that the Agency is the one that should be the first address for recognizing changes in the lifestyle of state officials, with special attention to those public functions that are extremely vulnerable to corruption and the influence of organized criminal groups”, Milovac said.
He points out that, in addition to the obvious issues with the personnel at the head of the Agency, there are more and more pronounced issues with the legal framework that regulates the area of income and assets records of officials, which currently allows for numerous abuses.
“Almost two years after the change of the previous government that created such a system, we still do not have enough political will for the concrete reforms in this area to really happen,” Milovac concluded.
“After everything we received from EUROPOL as a confirmation of suspicious behaviour of certain police officials, such passivity of the Agency is becoming an increasingly pronounced problem when it comes to the system’s response to the increasingly pronounced break of organized crime structures into the ranks of state bodies”, Milovac said.
Wore a watch worth an annual police salary
Former Assistant Director of the Police Administration, Enis Baković, was photographed by “Vijesti” reporters in 2019 with an expensive Rolex watch that cost more than the annual salary of police officers at the time.
Photo: Boris Pejović
For months, he refused to respond to the editorial office regarding that watch, and in the show “Načisto”, he said that he would never answer the journalist’s questions about it.
However, he wrote to his then boss Veselin Veljović in a statement that the Rolex watch he owned was an original one, but he had bought it from a relative for less than 5,000 euros, and that therefore, he did not have to report it to the Agency for Prevention of Corruption.
In that statement, Baković also wrote that he did not have a “Rolex” model “Cellini”, or an expensive watch of the Swiss brand “Brequet Tourbillon”, but that he had a watch “Frederique Constant” and a watch “Longines” for a longer time.
“It is true that I own an original Rolex watch, a ‘Submariner Date’ model, which I legally acquired – by buying it from a relative in May 2017 at a price for which there was no legal obligation to report it, of which I have evidence. Thus, it is a used watch, in good condition, which I have been using transparently for more than two years. Bearing in mind the price of the watch I paid, there was no legal obligation to report it to the Agency pursuant to Article 24 of the Law, which, among other things, prescribes the obligation to report movables whose value exceeds 5,000 euros”, Baković wrote in a statement to Veljović.
His statement was submitted in response to “Vijesti”, which asked the then head of Montenegrin police whether, as his direct superior, he would ask Baković to explain whether the watches he wore were originals of luxury brands or replicas, but also whether they would initiate a procedure against him if he wore replicas of luxury watches and suspend him for not reporting the crime. One of the questions was also whether Baković, if determined that his watches are original worth several thousand euros, would be asked to prove their origin.
