It took more than three months for the Podgorica High Court to deliver to the Ministry of Justice a final verdict against Ivica Tošković, the owner of the construction company "Tošković", which enabled him to get a job worth 1,3 million euros from the Public Works Administration.
The Ministry replied to the investigative team of MANS that on January 31, 2019, when they issued Tošković a certificate of non-convict, they did not have the final judgment from November 1, 2019. This is the final judgment in the "Vardar" case, which Tošković was convicted of the criminal offenses of creating a criminal organization and tax and contribution evasion.
The Ministry enters final judgments into the criminal records...
The Law on Public Procurement, as one of the conditions for participating in state tenders, stipulates that the participant has not been convicted of criminal offenses with elements of corruption and organized crime.
On January 31 of this year, despite the fact that there was a final verdict at the time, the Ministry of Justice issued Tošković a certificate of criminal record that he submitted to the tender of the Public Works Administration for the construction of a recycling yard in Berane.
Answering the question of the MANS Research Center how it is possible that a convicted person was issued a certificate of non-conviction, the Director General of the Directorate for the Execution of Criminal Sanctions of the Ministry of Justice, Nataša Radonjić, who also signed the disputed certificate, says that at the time of issuing the certificate, the Ministry was not in possession of the verdict for Tošković:
"The certificate issued on January 31.01.2020, 157. year for the person Ivica Tošković was issued on the basis of the state of the data in the electronic database that were on the date of issuance of the certificate in accordance with the Regulation on the manner of keeping criminal records. The information on the conviction according to the judgment of the High Court in Podgorica KVS No. 19/10.02.2020 was submitted to the Ministry of Justice by the court on February XNUMX, XNUMX. years".
In April of last year, Tošković entered into a plea agreement with the prosecutor's office, which was confirmed by a final verdict on November 1. As a member of a group that damaged the state budget for 3,7 million euros, Tošković was convicted of the criminal offenses of creating a criminal organization and tax and contribution evasion.
According to the data of the Police Administration, and based on the knowledge of the SDT, the criminal group extracted the profit obtained from the operations of the companies on the basis of fictitiously presented business relations and expenses (invoices), which were then returned to the owners in cash...
After winning the public tender, Tošković signed a contract worth 1,3 million euros with the director of the Public Works Administration, Rešad Nuhodžić. The contract stipulates that he will be paid up to 700 euros this year, and the rest next year.
The Public Works Administration announced to MANS that they did not perform additional checks on the documentation submitted by Tošković to the tender:
"The commission for the opening and evaluation of offers performs a review and evaluation of the correctness of the offer based on the evidence issued by the competent institutions and does not have the authority to check the validity and truthfulness of the official document issued by the institution responsible for issuing them".
The capital city of Podgorica had a similar interpretation of its powers in the tender procedure, which awarded several million contracts to the company "Toškovići", after its owner was legally convicted.
Nevertheless, the Law on Public Procurement allows the contracting authority, in this case the Public Works Administration, to additionally check the correctness of the documentation submitted by Tošković as part of his bid, including the certificate of criminal record itself, in accordance with Article 112.
MANS warns of serious shortcomings in the implementation of public procurement procedures, which, as in the case of the Capital City and the Public Works Administration, result in millions of jobs being awarded to persons convicted of serious crimes, which the Law on Public Procurement expressly prohibits:
"The information that Ivica Tošković was legally convicted was publicly available, not only to the state institutions that concluded lucrative contracts with him, but also to the Ministry of Justice, which issued him a certificate of innocence that was used to apply for tenders. Acting in the public interest required the verification of data on Ivica Tošković, both in the Ministry itself, as well as in the Directorate of Public Works and the Capital City, which did not happen. It is not difficult to conclude that here we have an abuse of formal procedures, which resulted in us practically rewarding those who broke the law. The punishment prescribed by the High Court with a final judgment is thus negligible compared to the profit that Tošković will earn by doing business with the state," said Dejan Milovac, director of the MANS Research Center.
In addition to the conditional prison sentence, Tošković was also sentenced to pay a fine of 40 thousand euros, with the obligation to return another 140 thousand to the state budget. After such a verdict, Tošković concluded several contracts with state authorities, with a total value of close to 3,5 million euros.
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