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 Bakovi\u0107, acquired a plot and a cottage in \u017dabljak.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mans.co.me\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/ENIS-BAKOVIC.jpeg\")
<\/a>Enis Bakovi\u0107, Photo: Boris Pejovi\u0107<\/p><\/div>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The Administrative Court instructed the Agency to repeat the procedure and issue a new, legal decision.<\/p>\n
The court reiterated once again the position that the Agency is the legal successor, and thus takes over the \u201crights, obligations, documentation, registers\u2026\u201d of the Commission for Prevention of Conflicts of Interest.<\/p>\n
MANS\u2019 initiative, which was rejected by the Agency, states that Bakovi\u0107 bought a cottage and a plot in \u017dabljak 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.<\/a><\/p>\n In the initiative from 2020, MANS also specifies that in 2015, Bakovi\u0107 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.<\/p>\n \u201dIn 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.<\/p>\n 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\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201dAPC 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\u2019s President Milo \u0110ukanovi\u0107, but also those against whom the competent State Prosecutor’s Office later filed charges precisely on suspicion of corruption\u201d, Milovac said.<\/p>\n