Cracked asphalt, streets without sidewalks, houses - in order to have a roof over your head, a constant unpleasant smell coming from the city landfill and from spilled sewage - this is the picture of Vrel Ribnički, the poorest settlement in Podgorica. It is unbelievable that citizens living in such a settlement are ready to donate up to 2.000 euros to DPS! However, the official records of that party confirm this.
Data on donations that were available to the Research Center of MANS show that no donation from residents of this settlement for the 2016 parliamentary elections amounted to less than 500 euros.
Residents of Vrelo Ribnički admit, however, that they are barely surviving, and maintaining a bare life excludes the possibility of giving away large sums of money.
How do you manage money?
- We work with old waste, we live a little, but there is no...
Would you be able to donate money to a stranger? Let's say, do you have a thousand euros to give to a stranger?
- By God, I don't have, from where, how... I have five sons, none of them are in work, and all of them from 29 to 18 years old, none of them are employed, I don't work anywhere either...
- There is no work, nothing to pay electricity, water, we can't manage to pay all the bills...
Do you get any help from the government?
- None. We receive something short, but we get nothing out of it. Are we going to eat or pay the bills?
- We don't work anywhere, we just sit at home, there is no work...
The data on donations that were available to the MANS Research Center show that no donation from the residents of Vrel Ribnički amounted to less than 500 euros, and that entire families paid up to 2.000 euros in cash on the same day. Overall, the residents of Vrel who decided to help DPS before the last parliamentary elections did so by paying the sums of 500, 1.000 and 2.000 euros, which is the maximum amount that a natural person can pay during the election campaign. It is also interesting that the residents of the same streets from this settlement made payments on the same day, so they were recorded on the DPS giro account.
According to the data available so far, all residents of Vrel paid cash sums at the counter of Societe Generale Bank's head office in Moskovska Street in Podgorica, and those who donated to DPS through a giro account had an account opened in Prva Banka.
Official reports on donations show that DPS collected 2016 euros on the eve of the 680.000 elections, which is several times more than all other parties and election lists combined.
"97 percent of the total of all donations that natural persons donated to all campaigns were donated to the ruling DPS and the Social Democrats, so we are talking about the amount of 737 thousand euros," says Danilo Kalezić from MANS.
Although the pre-election campaign lasted almost four months, DPS collected the entire amount in a little more than a calendar month. Payments to the DPS started arriving on August 18, and ended on September 26, when the quota of the projected 680.000 euros was finally met. It is interesting that after that date, not a single payment arrived on the DPS account, even though there were more than two weeks left until the October elections.
A detailed analysis of MANS shows that tens of thousands of euros were paid on certain days, so there were days when payments came from only one municipality
A detailed analysis of MANS shows that tens of thousands of euros were paid on certain days, so there were days when payments came from only one municipality. Thus, August 31 was reserved only for payments from Bijelo Polje, in the amount of 27.000 euros, and on September 13, only citizens of Podgorica paid donations.
According to available data, the DPS in Podgorica collected over 390.000 euros in just three weeks. Cash donations from the citizens of Podgorica were paid exclusively at the counter of the headquarters of Societe Generale Bank in Moskovska Street, although this bank has as many as seven business units in the capital.
According to the analysis of MANS, this dynamic and the organization of donations by individuals by municipality opens up room for suspicion that in the majority of cases, these are not voluntary, individual payments from citizens who support DPS, but rather a well-organized scheme for injecting so-called "black funds" " into the official financing streams of election campaigns.
"We believe that this example alone represents a sufficient reason and motive for the competent institutions to carry out a detailed control of the sources of donations to candidates and political parties ahead of the upcoming presidential and local elections, in order to ensure full transparency of the financing of election campaigns. This is the only way to prevent the money of criminal groups from having any what impact on the outcome of the elections in Montenegro", according to MANS.
Complete documentation on the financing of election campaigns is available at MANS website.
MANS Research Center: Dejan Milovac Lazar Grdinić
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