Contrary to the declarative promotion of morality and high integrity of judicial office holders, and the image carefully built over months of being a politically persecuted scapegoat for the sake of European integration, the Montenegrin Godmother, excuse me, Vesna Medenica, laughed in everyone's face and sent a message: corruption pays off.
Last year, I replaced a colleague and reported from the High Court on the Kuma trial, which was a hot topic in the Montenegrin judiciary. I returned to the newsroom shaken by the reality that, as a young journalist, I found myself in the courtroom.
What I saw there resembled a rotten system in miniature: hierarchy, reflexes, humiliation of the profession, and that silent, implicit cult of personality that has entered the system so deeply that it no longer registers as a shame. But as the order of things.
Then I called Medenica the Montenegrin Godmother.
Because of the cult of personality, which, I realized then, she had built among her colleagues.
At that moment, the subject of the main hearing at the trial of the group gathered around Medenice was the unlawful influence that, according to the indictment, Kuma exerted on the judges.
Whenever you hear the phrase "unlawful influence" in Montenegro, translate it into the language of reality - it is just a formal name for what godparents consider their right, what "belongs" to them.
That day, judges appeared as witnesses at Vesna Medenica's trial, and I was not surprised that they denied the allegations.
I was surprised by how they behaved before entering the courtroom.
The judges (witnesses) treated Medenica as an institution. As a higher power. As someone who still had a right to their loyalty, even when he was sitting in the dock.
"How are you, President, hang in there, this too shall pass..." is not concern for a former colleague, but serious respect for the cult of personality.
That level of respect, that manner of addressing, that tone, were not collegial, professional, or neutral.
They were submissive.
And no, it wasn't fear in the sense of "they're afraid of her".
It is an internal discipline.
When power doesn't need to be explained, because everyone already feels it in their bones.
It then became clear to me that Kumi could be tried, but that for years she had been doing something far smarter than any "unlawful influence".
She was building logistics.
People imagine corruption as a bribe, an envelope, a call, a deal...
But that's the entry level. Corruption for the poor.
Serious corruption is not "give it to me", serious corruption is "get used to belonging to me".
It's not that someone finishes your work, but that the work finishes itself. Because the system knows what to do when the Godmother appears... I mean "the president".
The godmother says in her closing statement: "Vesna, she will never speak. We know who Vesna is from and maybe they thought that if they propose 20 years in prison, I would speak. That will not happen. I will go with a clean face and a high forehead."
That is the code on which this logistics is based.
When you see that, then you stop getting carried away with punishments, because punishment is the end of a function, and this kind of logistics is the end of the state.
That's why Miloš Medenica's escape is not an unexpected epilogue, but rather appears to be the result of years of carefully constructed Kuma logistics.
The verdict is proof that the system can sometimes be brave, at least on paper.
The escape is proof that paper endures everything, and that the system knows who really matters.
We cannot talk about the "rule of law" while, for example, Miloš Medenica has the comfort of hiding before being arrested.
It could happen that the police are late. It could happen that someone escapes. But the point here is not that they escaped.
He already had the space to escape. That space didn't come into being yesterday.
It's not a question of one man's skill but of the depth of the network.
That space was built over years, with the very same submission that I saw outside the courtroom, that contrite "President" that sounds like a prayer.
Vesna Medenica was sentenced to ten years in prison, but her school passed the exam.
Her real power is not in her ability to influence her colleagues, but in her ability to create generations of them who fear that she can still influence.
Because corruption here is not only rewarded through money, but also through opportunities.
Money is a consumable commodity, the possibilities are limitless, and now we've learned that they are also hereditary.
The ability to be above procedure. To have time. To get information. To get out of the way before the state realizes it's their turn.
Well, Miloš's disappearance is the simplest demonstration of that kind of privilege.
Then you realize that in Montenegro, not only functions are shared, but also opportunities.
And one of the most expensive is to disappear when needed.
"The brother is not exactly unskilled, although people think so, and they should think so," Miloš once wrote, and recently demonstrated this philosophy. The brother is not at the address.
Anyone who thinks this is an "exception" should remember Svetozar Marović.
A man who pleaded guilty and was sentenced by a final verdict.
And again, the court was no stronger than the net.
Neither the guilty plea nor the final verdict were enough to break the logistics.
Marović went to Serbia, allegedly for treatment, and stayed there for years, while Montenegro plays the role of a state through letters, requests, and statements.
There's no mystery there.
Judgments serve the public, logistics serve the powerful.
Because of all this, Vesna Medenica's sentence is not the only thing that makes this story important.
The state can condemn an individual, but it cannot cut the network.
He can impose a sentence, but he doesn't know how to dismantle logistics.
There's something else. In Montenegro, abuse of power is often treated as some kind of mischief. An official "lends" his nephew an official jeep, he takes a little drive, causes an incident, the public is horrified, the institutions promise a reaction. And nothing.
But that's, frankly, corruption for beginners. Amateurish. No vision. No plan.
Serious corruption doesn't take a jeep. It takes an institution.
Serious corruption does not ask for favors. It builds conditions in which favors are not a request, but a natural and logical sequence.
According to the Godfather's recipe: invest, build, create a cult and find its followers.
Because this is a country of the organized.
And ten years in prison? That comes as a corporate tax. That's a legal penalty.
The possibility of escape is a personal reward.
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