When corruption takes your freedom, it eventually takes your life. This is how Matthew Karuna Galicija describes the situation in Malta, a country of endemic corruption, similar to Montenegro, where his mother Daphne, who investigated numerous corrupt affairs of Maltese officials, was cruelly liquidated almost three years ago. "Milo Đukanović is a key person from Montenegro that my mother dealt with while investigating the case of Možur and the connections between Đukanović, Prime Minister of Malta Joseph Muscat and the ruling elite in Azerbaijan," says Matthew.
When corruption takes your freedom, it eventually takes your life. The same conclusion could be expressed by Ratko Knežević, the guru of the murdered Croatian publisher Ivo Pukanić, with whom he investigated the connections of Milo Đukanović, the Italian mafia, the controversial Serbian tailor Canet Subotic and the whole gallery of godfathers and friends of the Montenegrin prime minister who "took care" of the business of the century related to the so-called transit of cigarettes. "Pukanić died as a victim of his craft, his pen, his courage and the courage of his journalists. His life was a 'chronicle of announced death' since he stopped the strongest mafia organization in the Balkans in the 20th century with his writing", are the words of the former Knežević, which he is reluctant to remember today. This is how it turns out that corruption takes many people's freedom, some people's lives, and some people's dignity.
When corruption eats the state, it also eats its institutions. Something similar comes from the conclusion of American ambassador Rajnka, who wrote a few months ago that the term 'rule of law' is much more than words and that "every individual who occupies a position in the hierarchy of power must clearly and truly accept that the same laws apply to him or her as to all other citizens"! It remains only for advisers and trainers from the ranks of American investigators to explain it to our prosecutors, with whom they have been training for years. So that it doesn't fall out - we whitewashed for nothing.
When corruption becomes the modus vivendi of a society and its political elite, then a 'strong banking sector' is necessary in order to launder all the money that flows through corrupt schemes into the private pockets of the powerful. "There is a possibility", says the Maltese journalist, that some accounts of Universal Bank, controversial Greek businessman Petros Statis, personal friend of Đukanović, our strategic investor, media mogul and donor, "were used as black funds for corruption in Europe". It also happens in the EU, as in the specific case in Latvia, that a bank serves the same purpose - but soon after suspicions of money laundering, it is blocked and closed. When corruption does happen, in developed democracies there are living institutions that do not lie down and pretend to be dead, but quickly prosecute the corrupt, and society then emerges even stronger from such painful situations. Last year, in a major analysis of the functioning of the Montenegrin banking sector, our Center for Investigative Journalism came to the startling data that Statis's Universal and its predecessor First Financial Bank were for years the leaders in business with their own owners and founders, which in developed democracies immediately arouses suspicion of large-scale money laundering. Since corruption has eaten up all institutions here, including the once serious and independent Central Bank, it sounds like a reasonable proposal by the son of the murdered journalist that "individual accounts and banks in Montenegro should attract the attention of the US Ministry of Finance and the European Banking Agency". At the price of Đukanović becoming angry with his Western partners.
When corruption becomes the main motive for engaging in politics, then you have at the head of the state one of the richest politicians in Europe, which could not be concluded from his property record, which, like all other mechanisms of controlling the powerful, serves to mock not only facts but also common sense. Thus, the illegal donations of local tycoons to the ruling party become an expression of 'mutual voluntariness', and the salary of the head of the IB parliament is paid at three times the market price - an example of a 'good deal' from a, in the words of SDT, a "reputable citizen".
When corruption unites Đukanović's deputies like frogs in a swamp, then it is not surprising that they, referring even to Plato, show that crime is ineradicable here, rejecting the discussion in the Parliament of Montenegro about the Možur affair and the possible connections of those who ordered the murder of the Maltese journalist with our high officials. "Power and influence will weaken over time, and with it the power to cover up crimes," says Matthew Karuna Galicija. The leaders of the police claim that they are ready as guns blazing to assist their Maltese colleagues in the investigation of the corruption scandal of Možura, the leaders of the prosecution also, they just need Katnić to promise that he will not be tired and thus prone to mistakes in the possible investigation of the murder of Dafna Karuna, as his colleague Ražnatović was on the night of the liquidation of Duško Jovanović. To paraphrase Saramago: corruption does not take away your sight, but it makes you blind.
When corruption weaves its web, then the Možura scheme is created, which a Maltese journalist describes as "an example of an organized criminal network formed by corrupt officials and businessmen from Malta, Azerbaijan, China and Montenegro, with which they stole our money right in front of our noses". And when the EU and NATO respond to all this with praise or, what is even better, with donations and favorable loans for such corrupt governments, then everything works, says Matthew, "like throwing dynamite on a campfire". Reforms are actions and not words, that's why EU spokeswoman Ana Pisonero directly and without diplomatic pretensions connects the investigation into Možura with Montenegro's progress in the negotiations. For years, the European Union has warned the local authorities that the captured institutions are a stone around the neck of Montenegro in the accession negotiations, so that now they will switch to a stick and open conditionality of the Government of Montenegro, which also coincides with earlier information from Brussels that Montenegro will never receive a serious invitation for membership until an impartial investigation of a series of cases related to the possible corruption of Đukanović himself is carried out.
Justice for Milo, not only for Tachi.
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