Source: ND “Vijesti”
The Agency for Prevention of Corruption, as far as the administrative and technical conditions for work are concerned, has almost everything, and it can access data that even the Special State Prosecutor’s Office cannot access. That is why the Executive Director of the Network for Affirmation of NGO Sector (MANS), Vanja Ćalović Marković, in an interview with “Vijesti”, says that the key issue is the impartiality, accountability and courage of the leading people in that Agency.
“The Agency has significant funds, it has access to data that is of better quality than the one of the Special Prosecutor’s Office. It has direct access to certain databases, which special prosecutors do not. In this sense, the key issue is the impartiality and accountability, as well as courage of the future management of the Agency in how it will determine priorities – whether the priority are trivial cases where someone forgot to report 10 or 15 euros of some compensation, or cases where there is a huge difference in income and assets of public officials in relation to their lifestyle”, Ćalović Marković emphasized.
She also said that the competence of the Agency related to the financing of political parties was particularly important. “This is precisely the segment in which the political parties have an additional interest in capturing the Agency’s management and preventing them from really dealing with the issue, because we have seen that there are structures on both political sides that do very suspicious business when it comes to financing political campaigns,” Ćalović Marković says. She also warns that penalties are a key issue when it comes to the Law on Prevention of Corruption.
“These sanctions do not have any serious effect on public officials, even when they are prosecuted. However, when we talk about the cases of President Milo Đukanović’s watch collection, his property in Kočani, lifestyles of a large number of officials that are highly disproportionate to their income, the key is to create a system of binding laws. Hence, we are talking about the connection between the law on prevention of corruption and confiscation of illegally acquired property. That is why the laws should be amended immediately, hand-in-hand, so that a deficiency in one regulation or in the work of one body would not have a chain effect on the entire procedure and those bodies that have shown that they want to do something”, Ćalović Marković points out.
According to her, the Law on Prevention of Corruption is one of the regulations that should have been changed as soon as the government changed, because it is one of the most important tools for detecting illegally acquired property. “The Agency, in charge of its implementation, has so far proven countless times that it is the political ‘whip’ of the previous regime. What makes me worried to some extent are the motives of the new government to change that law, considering that most of the MPs of the new majority were under the attack of the Agency. Those were minor violations which should not have been a priority in the work of the Agency, however, among the MPs of the new government there are those who break the law, and some have not even been reporting their assets and income for years. I also think that among them there are those who have an interest in hiding assets and deleting many mechanisms from the law again”, Ćalović Marković assessed.
She expects that “we will not get into a situation where the new government is not aware that it needs to limit itself and others, and that it needs to show much greater political will compared to the previous regime”. “The process of amendments has started in the Parliament, we received an invitation to participate in the Working Group, we will accept it, and we expect that the draft law will also be on public debate and that it will be sent to the European Commission in order to avoid for some particular interests to be involved in it”, Ćalović Marković points out. She also believes that the reform of the judiciary should have started two years ago, in parallel with the reform of the State Prosecutor’s Office. “…Because there is no progress if the indictments are not confirmed, and the proceedings are not conducted before impartial courts, but before judges who are captured and essentially under the control of the previous regime”, the Director of MANS said.
That organization, as Ćalović Marković points out, has repeatedly warned that the efforts of the Special State Prosecutor’s Office “may remain without any concrete results, because there is no vision of reform related to the judiciary”. “We saw in the proceedings related to Vesna Medenica, and in the case of Petar Lazović as well, that the judges, who are closely related to the former president of the Supreme Court, made decisions and were involved in those cases. Without cleaning the judiciary of “rotten” boards, because nothing has been done about it for at least ten years, we will not see concrete results. We risk getting into an even bigger problem – that these proceedings initiated by the Special Prosecutor’s Office end in acquittals, because some judges are involved in those proceedings or connected to those persons, and they chronically do not report conflicts of interest”, Ćalović Marković warned.
When the origin of the assets cannot be proven, the case should be submitted to special prosecutors
Ćalović Marković emphasized once again that all the issues of the Draft Amendments to the Law on seizure and confiscation of material benefit derived from criminal activity stem from the basic issue, which is the constructive error of that regulation. “Instead of the Special State Prosecutor’s Office and the confirmation of the indictment being a filter and a ‘trigger’ for the initiation of this proceedings, the system should be set up exactly the other way around: that the authorities within the institutions, for example the Tax Administration or some new body, check the assets of certain persons to whom the regulation applies and initiate court proceedings against that assets. When it is established that persons cannot prove the origin of the assets, then such proceedings will be submitted to the Special Prosecutor’s Office”, Ćalović Marković emphasized.
In her words, this is exactly the point. “In this way, by confirming the Special Prosecutor’s indictment, the number of people to whom that process can be applied is dramatically reduced. The proposed law greatly limits the period to which we can return when it comes to acquiring assets. If criminal acts become obsolete or if there is no evidence, then proceedings against the assets cannot be initiated, which is absurd”, Ćalović Marković warned.
According to her, proceedings against the assets should be able to be initiated against any person whose official income differs from the assets, regardless of when it was acquired. “However, the fact that they introduced the Special Prosecutor’s Office and the indictment as a condition to start that proceedings led to the issue of how much time we can go back. If they had made a special law, as we suggested many times, introducing proceedings against assets, then there would have been no need for any backtracking. That is why I pointed out several times that amendments cannot fix that law because it has a structural error, which will dramatically minimize the results”, Ćalović Marković emphasized.
She expects the regulation to be returned to public discussion. “I don’t understand this stubbornness in insisting on a solution that, in addition to us, was criticized by numerous European and Montenegrin experts”, the Director of MANS explained.
She also points out that the Law on Free Access to Information is a very important anti-corruption law. “…But the continuity of the government is surprising – that regulation has also been underlined and amended. We do not know whether it will enter the parliamentary procedure, given everything that is happening in the political sphere, and we are very concerned that the regulation that received a positive opinion from the European Commission, made in cooperation with the civil sector, is now being kept in the drawers again without any consultation, and we do not know when and if it will be submitted to the Parliament. I think that is not a good way, especially when it comes to anti-corruption laws, which is the regulation on free access to information”, Ćalović Marković says.
She also states that Prime Minister Dritan Abazović is aware of the importance of that regulation. “…Because Mr. Stevo Muk and I repeatedly called on the importance of the urgent adoption of that law at the National Council for the Fight against High-Level Corruption. At that time, he (Abazović) claimed in the Government of Zdravko Krivokapić that his hands were tied and that these processes were taking longer than they should. Now in his government, we see that these processes are happening behind the scenes, without consulting those who worked the most on that law, and we don’t even know what its fate will be. That is not a good message, it is very important to fix that law instead of using its amendments for new government, which knows what it looks like to be under the control of the public, to integrate some of its interests into the regulation”, Ćalović Marković emphasized.
