They wrote to "hackers", then sent half a million: Where did the state money earmarked for paying for the equipment of the Montenegro Airport end up?

The airports of Montenegro paid half a million euros to the wrong account for the stairs for boarding passengers, because no one previously checked whether it was the account of the company with which they agreed to deliver the equipment.

The Swift number to which they sent 551.000 euros at the beginning of last week arrived by email, and they communicated with the person who sent it to them for more than two months, without anyone establishing that it was not the representatives of the British company "TBD (Owen Holland) Limited ” with which business was agreed.

"Vijesti" was unofficially told that the conversation was led by the employees of the commercial office and that they had delivered the second number of the money transfer order to the financial service.

According to that information, the payment order was signed by the dismissed executive director Vladan Drasković, although he did not receive the approval of the Board of Directors (BoD) for such work.

Allegedly, the company's management tried to hide the error from the board, and this was officially confirmed by the recent president of OD Eldin Dobardzic.

"Neither did I give consent for the payment of 551 thousand euros, nor did the former executive director immediately inform me that the money had disappeared, nor will I serve as a front for anyone to cover up extremely suspicious transactions", said Dobardžić after the relevant minister Filp Radulović guest on TV Nova said that he was taken aback by the dismissal.

Due to a series of omissions, the Airports of Montenegro launched internal checks, and previously a criminal complaint was filed against the "hacker", as they called him.

The IT service of the Montenegro Airport allegedly established that it was not a computer fraud, and reported it to the board at the session where the lost money was discussed.

The relevant minister, Radulović, did not answer the questions of "Vijesti" about the case for days.

This case was the reason for the recent Board of Directors of the state-owned company he heads Eldin Dobardzic dismissed CEO Vladan Drašković on Wednesday. Eight days earlier, Drašković, as an authorized person in ACG, signed an order for the payment of 551.000 euros to the British company "TBD (Owen Holland) Limited". That company delivered eight pieces of new self-propelled stairs for boarding passengers on planes to the airports in Tivat and Podgorica, after being selected as the most favorable bidder in a previously conducted tender and with which a contract was signed on March 9 last year. That procurement, as explained by the source of "Vijesti" from ACG, was in the Public Procurement Plan of ACG for 2022, which was adopted by the Board of Detectives and which last February authorized Drašković to carry out this public procurement procedure.

"The British delivered the equipment and Drašković, in accordance with the contractual obligations, ordered that they be paid for the delivered goods. He submitted the payment order to the ACG financial service on Tuesday, March 19 of this year in the afternoon, and the financial service processed it and sent it to the bank on Wednesday morning," the source of "Vijesti" stated.

He further states that the domestic bank through which ACG operates implemented this payment order immediately, according to the so-called to the "T0 procedure" (the company did not ask her to do so), instead of the usual "T2 procedure", which implies payment of the order within 48 hours.

"Employees in the financial sector of ACG saw a few hours after the order was given to the bank that something was wrong and that the money was sent to someone else, not to the TBD company. They informed Drašković about this, whose immediate reaction to the domestic bank resulted in the fact that the transaction was stopped on time and the money was blocked in the account of the party, the so-called intermediary. intermediate banks - National Westminster in London. As announced, the money will be returned to ACG after the ongoing procedure", said the source of "Vijesti".

According to the sources of "Vijesti", this incident was the result of a hacker's intrusion into the business communication between ACG and TBD, where as yet unidentified hackers alternately sent e-mails with false content to one and the other, in order to try to get hold of over half a million euros of the airport's money. companies. Allegedly, only after the order given to the bank for the payment of money, it was discovered in the financial sector of ACG that they specified the invoice that they received in an email from an alleged employee of the TBD company, where the hackers, however, permuted the address extension on it from the real company address of the British company tbd. uk to fictitious tdb.uk.

Reporting to the police

"The fraud attempt was discovered at the last moment and the transaction was stopped in time, as evidenced by the fact that last Friday the National Westminster bank informed the Montenegrin bank and ACG that the money was blocked on its account and that it would not be forwarded to the account set up by the hackers . ACG immediately reported to the police the suspicion of an attempted fraud during which an unknown person tried to illegally appropriate their money", said the source of "Vijesti".

Dobardžić indirectly accused that he was responsible for the "disappearance" of over half a million euros and said that he will not serve as a cover for anyone to cover up extremely dubious affairs and that he "as a responsible man, is only interested in the truth and honest work. Drašković replied that the ACG money had not disappeared, that it was blocked in the account of an intermediary bank in London and that it would be returned to the company after the completion of the ongoing banking procedure.

According to the knowledge of "Vijesti", before the shift, Drašković contacted the Montenegrin bank through which ACG operates and asked for data on all transactions that it performed for ACG using the T0 method instead of the usual T2 method, as well as a refund for the more expensive bank commissions that it charged ACG. in for all those T0 transactions.

"The timing of this incident is very strange and indicative in the context of events with the announced and expected replacement of the Board of Directors with Dobardžić at the head, and the appointment of a new Board of Directors of ACG. Likewise, it should be borne in mind that Drašković has so far signed several contracts with suppliers of goods and services for ACG that are individually worth much more than 100.000 euros, which Dobardžić insists is according to the Statute of ACG, the limit of spending money that the executive director could to implement without obtaining the formal consent of the Board of Directors. Why, then, did Dobardžić use only this transaction in which someone tried to divert ACG's cash using electronic fraud as a reason for the dismissal of the executive director, and not any previous such transactions. Does this mean that the Board of Directors with Dobardžić at the head all the time up until now violated the Statit of the company because it allowed Drašković to sign contracts worth up to almost a million euros without their formal consent, such as, for example, the contract for the purchase of a new heavy gas-powered vehicle for Podgorica airports in 2023", said the interlocutor of "Vijesti", adding that there have been at least ten such cases since September 2021, when the current ACG Statute was adopted.

Minister of Transport and Maritime Affairs Filip Radulović stated that the dismissal of Drašković before the summer IATA season is harmful for the country that depends on tourism and that the decision to decapitate ACG the day before the new Board of Directors comes is a really shameful thing, and that it looks like a personal reckoning to him.

At the last session on Thursday, the government appointed a new board of directors of the state-owned enterprise.

Dobardžić and Drašković have been on bad terms for a long time

Several "Vijesti" sources from the state company and the Ministry of Transport claim that Dobardžić is personally behind the dismissal of Drašković.

For a long time, Dobardžić has had bad relations with Drašković, who did not allow him to interfere in the work, even though Dobardžić, with the support of several other members of the then Board of Directors, tried to create a parallel "chain of management and command", so that Dobardžić would be the one who will lead the ACG on an operational level on a daily basis.

Dobardžić came into conflict with Drašković over almost all aspects of ACG's work - from excessive party recruitment that escalated at the time when Dobardžić (an official of the URA movement) joined the Board of Directors, through the waste of company money on representation, official trips and accommodation expenses of Board members director, to the avoidance of the board of directors to more decisively take the side of the executive management in the dispute with the union regarding the new collective agreement in that company, which Drašković insisted on in order to stop further groundless exposure of ACG to multimillion-dollar lawsuits by workers for alleged unpaid so-called the starting part of the salary.