The contribution of the Agency for Prevention of Corruption (APC) to the increase of liability and integrity of the holders of judicial office has thus far been negligible, and for most of the reported cases, the legal deadline in which this institution had to make a decision has expired.
Thus, for three months, APC has not acted upon the request of MANS to initiate proceedings against the judges of the High Court in Podgorica, Sanja Čakanović and Vesna Kovačević, the judge of the Constitutional Court, Faruk Resulbegović, as well as the retired judge of the Supreme Court, Hasnija Simonović.
Using the Law on Free Access to Information, MANS obtained several documents that raise the suspicion that the listed judges failed to report changes in their assets within the deadline, all after they bought and/or sold a certain property.
In addition to the aforementioned judges, APC is late in making decisions in the cases of state prosecutors Andrijana Nastić, Veljko Rutović and Vesna Jovićević (retired), as well as judges Zoran Radović and retired Ramo Striković, due to the same suspicion that they hid changes in their assets or they did not report it at all. The public rightfully expects legal action from the new Agency’s management, as well as taking a different course in the prosecution of illicit enrichment and conflict of interest of public officials. Strengthening the trust in the judiciary and building the integrity of judicial and prosecutorial bodies are not possible without public and true data on the assets of judges and prosecutors, as well as persons connected to them.
Until recently, the Agency took the position that the sale or purchase of assets does not represent a change in the assets of more than 5,000 euros which requires that it must be reported as part of a separate assets report, but former director Jelena Perović interpreted these transactions as a transfer of the property from “immovable into movable” or vice versa, which is precisely the practice that encouraged public officials to hide from APC, and thus from the public, the increase or decrease in assets, i.e. money acquired from the sale.
In the group of listed cases whose resolving is expected are also cases related to changes in assets of the former high-ranking officials in the judiciary, Vesna Medenica and Milivoje Katnić.
In June this year, the Commission for Code of Ethics of Judges of the Judicial Council of Montenegro decided to submit proposals to the Disciplinary Prosecutor for determining the disciplinary liability of judges Vesna Kovaćević and Sanja Čakanović, as well as judge Zoran Radović, all from the High Court in Podgorica, because they did not report changes in their assets within the deadline or did not do it at all. These are the same omissions that MANS reported, along with documentation, not only to the Judicial Council but to the APC as well.
As part of the project “Responsible judiciary for a strengthened rule of law in Montenegro”, which is being implemented with the support of the European Union, MANS will continue to report all detected illegalities, suspicions and open issues regarding the assets of judges and prosecutors and persons related to them to the competent authorities and inform the public about it. Only an independent, impartial and objective judiciary, devoid of influence and suspicions about the integrity and origin of the assets of holders of the judicial office, can guarantee the establishment of the rule of law in a state that bears a great burden of transitional robbery and infiltration of organized crime and high corruption into every pore of society.
MANS
