Maraš and Vuković on the arrest list?

The Special State Prosecutor's Office intends to expand the investigation also against the former executive director of "Plantaž" Verica Maraš and the former director of the Legal and General Affairs Sector Miroslav Vuković due to the suspicion that they, along with the members of the former Board of Directors who were arrested yesterday, abused their official position when concluding the settlement agreement with the company "OMP Engineering".

As a result of this work, the state company was allegedly damaged for 350.000 euros, as well as 37.000 square meters of land in Donji Kokoti.

On the order of prosecutor Vukas Radonjić, members of the Special Police Department arrested former members of the Board of Directors Veselin Vukotić, Božo Mihailović, Đorđij Rajković, Sead Šahman, Duško Perović and Anica Hajduković, whose hearings will begin today on suspicion of having committed the criminal offense of "abuse of position in an economic business".

"Due to the existence of grounds for suspicion that they have committed the criminal offense of abuse of position in economic operations from Art. 272 st. 3 in connection with para. 1 of the Criminal Code of Montenegro, because as members of the board of directors they made a decision to conclude a harmful contract on out-of-court settlement between the injured company '13. July - Plantaže' AD and 'OMP Engineering' from Podgorica, whose partial execution caused damage to the injured company, and 'OMP Engineering' obtained a benefit", reads the announcement of SDT.

The opening of the investigation followed an investigation by the SDT, which formed a case after the new management filed a criminal complaint in February against the former chairman of the Board of Directors, Veselin Vukotić, former executive director Verica Maraš, former member of the Board of Directors Božo Mihailović and former director of the Legal Department. and general affairs of Miroslav Vuković, due to suspicions that by exploiting and abusing their position, they obtained multimillion-dollar illegal property benefits from the company "OMP Engineering".

Six voted, Jovićević against

During the preparation of business documentation during the settlement procedure between "Plantaž" and "OMP Engineering" from March to April 2020, and after the failed deal with the briquette factory, the state company committed to the company, which was founded in 2009 by Oleg Obradović, Miodrag Ivanović and Predrag Bošković, who later left the business, paid 350.000 euros and transferred ownership of 37.000 square meters of land in Donji Kokoti to them.

According to the contractual obligation, the company "OMP Engineering" undertook to transfer to "Plantaže" 50 percent of the share in the joint company "Plant OMP", which has never worked or generated any income.

During the voting at the then Board of Directors, the suspected members voted for such conclusion of the settlement, and only the member Samo Jovićević, in front of the then shareholder of Podgorička banka, was the only one against the contract that harms the state company.

According to "Vijesti" information, Jovićević will be one of the witnesses in the further criminal proceedings.

SDT unofficially said that they proposed and then adopted the harmful settlement by the majority of the Board of Directors of "Plantaža" at that time, even though there was a litigation proceeding before the Commercial Court in Podgorica between the two companies for compensation of damages according to the claim and counterclaim, in which all the evidence and statements of experts were in favor of the state-owned company with a history of over 55 years.

During the civil proceedings before the commercial court, the experts stated that the value of the money and land transferred to the company "OMP Engineering" amounted to at least 1,4 million euros in damage to the state company.

They took money, contracts, a list of loans

On the order of prosecutor Radonjić, SPO officers yesterday searched the apartments and offices of suspected former members of the board of directors of "Plantaž", during which they seized money, telephones, contracts and lists of loans to other persons.

"The confiscated items will be examined during the further proceedings", said the interlocutor of "Vijesti" from the investigation.

In 2009, the company "Plantaže", Montenegrin pride for decades, announced a public call in which they were looking for a partner for the briquette factory. "OMP Engineering", a company that was founded exactly three days after the announcement of the advertisement, responded.

In July 2011, a ceremonial opening of the factory was organized - in front of the cameras, the then mayor of Podgorica Miomir Mugoša and Verica Maraš cut the red ribbon. Despite the big plans, the production of briquettes was never started even though "Plantaže" and a private company invested 1.467.029,02 euros in money and land in the factory, while the contribution of "OMP Engineering" was 1.278,674,47 euros.

In 2014, "OMP Engineering" initiated a lawsuit against "Plantaž", where at the beginning compensation of six million euros was requested, claiming that "Plantaž" offered low-quality vines and in insufficient quantities, while this state-owned company subsequently initiated a counter-claim claiming that "OMP Engineering" installed equipment in the joint factory that is not suitable for grapevine processing.

During the proceedings in the Commercial Court, the mechanical expert Goran Dedić gave a finding in favor of "Plantaž". He determined that the equipment of "OMP Engineering", which was their stake, could not be used in that type of production at all.

Despite this opinion of the expert, the former management of "Plantaž" initiated the settlement procedure in 2020, and the company's lawyers Ana Đukanović and Marko Hajduković canceled their power of attorney.

"The conclusion of such a settlement is even more surprising and worrying given the fact that the findings and opinions of experts in the mechanical, economic and agricultural professions, as well as the statements of your management and your employees, were entirely in favor of 'Plantaž,'" warned lawyers Đukanović and Hajduković.

The judge in the multi-year dispute before the Commercial Court was the arrested former president Blažo Jovanić.

At the request of the new management of "Plantaž" at the end of 2021, the proceedings before the Commercial Court between "OMP Engineering" and "Plantaž" were renewed because the new management did not want to implement the settlement agreement due to the suspicion that the agreement was harmful to the company.

Free estimates instead of analysis

When concluding the settlement agreement, the management of "Plantaža" at that time did not engage any law firm or legal advisor, who would analyze the dispute and give a recommendation whether to accept the settlement or continue the dispute, but everything came down to the assessment of Miroslav Vuković and the views of the management members Maraš, Mihailović and Vukotić.

"During the sessions, Vuković was against obtaining a second legal opinion, while the opinion of the law office representing the opposite side was obtained," it was written in the criminal report of the new "Plantaža" management.

Adjustments until alignment

In the criminal complaint filed by the new management of the state-owned company, it is written that the defendants Vukotić, Maraš, Mihailović and Vuković, by exploiting their official position, i.e. by abusing their position in business operations, obtained illegal financial benefits for others and caused damage to the company - acting organized as members criminal groups.

In that application, it is stated that Vukotić formed a criminal group that planned the way in which they would proceed with the execution of the criminal offense and that they did so by concluding a settlement agreement and an agreement on the transfer of shares.

"In order to implement the criminal plan, they met dozens of times with the representatives of the business company 'OMP Engineering' in whose favor the disputed contracts were concluded, all with the aim of extracting money from the company '13 Jul Plantaže' AD", the report says.

They are accused of abusing their position and authority, misrepresenting the essential facts on which the decision of the company's Board of Directors on the conclusion of disputed contracts depended.

A magician for the privileged few

Vukotić - the magician of the Montenegrin economy - as he has been labeled for years, is most deserving of the fact that the Montenegrin political and economic elite accepted for granted the thesis about the end of history and the absence of an alternative to the (neo)liberal concept.

Professor Vukotić is known as a great opponent of state interventionism and protectionism and a promoter of the idea of ​​a microstate.

Good connoisseurs of the situation will say that Vukotić's vision of Montenegro becoming a Mediterranean tiger was magical for a handful of privileged people, who during the propagation of his ideology of neoliberalism came to enormous wealth.

Vukotić strongly advocated privatization, and he is the creator of the mass voucher privatization program, in which vouchers were distributed to citizens free of charge and could be exchanged for company shares. However, a large number of those vouchers, in the absence of the right information, ended up with privatization funds that closed a large number of state-owned enterprises in order to get valuable assets.

For a large number of citizens, Vukotić's vision was more than disastrous - hundreds of destroyed factories, thousands of workers on the streets, crumbs for social workers, crumbs for pensioners...

"Private property is a mechanism that turns enemies into friends", "We don't sell companies, we buy strategic partners", are just some of the sentences that could be heard from Vukotić.

This advocate of the free market and the inspirer of the Montenegrin economic school remained on the state budget for that entire period.

Vukotić was in the cabinet of Montenegrin Prime Minister Vuk Vukadinović from 1985 to 1988, and he was also the Minister for Privatization and Entrepreneurship in the federal government of Ante Marković from 1989 to 1992.

In 1992, he founded the International Postgraduate Studies "Entrepreneurial Economics" at the Faculty of Economics in Podgorica.

And while he convinced students that the future lies in entrepreneurship, business ideas and the open market, he firmly held his position on the Board of Directors in "Plantaže", which remained majority owned by the state. He has been the president of the board of directors in that company since 2006.

He was also part of the "smart, young and beautiful" group and a long-time vice president of the Privatization Council, thus participating in the privatization of a large number of Montenegrin companies.

Vukotić strongly believes in competitiveness, which is why, at least at first it seemed, he founded the University of Donja Gorica (UDG) with partners (among others the long-term prime minister and current president of the state Milo Đukanović and Dragan Vukčević, the current president of the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts).

"The book "Dangerous words", i.e. the dictionary of free market economy, is embedded in the foundations of the UDG building. A sign that graduates of this University will be free (in demand) on the wider market... This is our preparation for entering the EU! Our goal is to help Montenegro become a Mediterranean tiger in the EU!" said Vukotić. However, the authoritarian, maltene biblical dictionary also says something about his understanding of freedom, so at UDG there are "13 commandments for taking exams and colloquiums".

Brzo Vukotić complained that the system of financing higher education in Montenegro, and in the region, is "undemocratic and discriminatory towards students of private colleges", because these students do not have access to the budget funds of all students.

He was supported by Milo Đukanović, then the prime minister, so UDG soon "became competitive" with the help of budget funds, which had a negative impact on the University of Montenegro, which saw reduced grants and the number of students and increased debts.

Abazović: Behind the hysteria is corruption

I encourage the Special State Prosecutor's Office to continue its activities against the persons who damaged the state budget, Prime Minister Dritan Abazović announced.

"Europe is looking for results, not fascism. As I said, political processes have nothing to do with the Basic Treaty but with justice. Behind every national hysteria is actually corruption," said Abazović regarding the SDT action in which members of the former Board of Directors of "Plantaž" were arrested.