New data on the budget reserve spending during the pre-election campaign analysed by MANS show that the Government of Montenegro paid additional 52 thousand euros in the week in which the local elections were held as an aid to citizens based on the damage caused by natural disasters.
The mentioned funds were paid out on the basis of the decisions made by the Commission for Assessment of Damages from Natural Disasters headed by Zoran Miljanić, Minister without Portfolio, and those were 37 individual payments ranging from 50 to 5,500 euros.
This is the second major payment of this type of welfare given by the Government of Montenegro since the calling of the elections, and it is interesting that during the previous year, in 2021, there were no payments from the budget reserve on this basis.
MANS previously announced that in mid-October, a payment of close to 50,000 was made on this basis, which makes a total of over 100,000 euros that the Government of Montenegro has allocated to citizens since the calling of local elections.
Some of these decisions are available on the website of the Agency for Prevention of Corruption (APC) and show that the Commission for Assessment of Damages from Natural Disasters adopted them at the end of July, but also that the payment was made only after the calling of the elections.
In addition, in the decisions on the payment of compensation for damage caused by a disaster, the Commission hid the identity of the persons to whom the money was paid, which further reduced the transparency of spending the money from the budget reserve.
The insufficiently clear criteria for the payment of money from the budget reserve, and the additional efforts that the executive power invests in hiding data on the spending of public funds, open a huge space for abuses during the pre-election period.
MANS
