Multimillion-dollar damage occurred to the state due to the illegal payment of money from the Agricultural Budget in a five-year period, several unofficial sources told the News.
Because of this, two former ministers of agriculture and rural development, Petar Ivanović and Milutin Simović, as well as former state secretary Nemanja Katnić and former head of the Finance, Accounting and Public Procurement Service, Vukica Perović, were arrested yesterday.
The Special State Prosecutor's Office (SDT) has officially announced that members of the Special Police Department have detained four people and that another former minister of agriculture is also against them. Budimir Mugoša, a criminal report was filed due to the existence of grounds for suspicion that they committed three extended criminal offenses of abuse of official position and two criminal offenses of abuse of official position.
"The subject of the criminal complaint and proceedings is the allocation of funds to certain non-governmental organizations, in the period from April 2014 to July 2019, contrary to the Decree on the conditions, manner and dynamics of the implementation of agrarian policy measures - the Agricultural Budget for specific years, which benefited non-governmental organizations , and the damage to the injured Montenegro was inflicted in the amount of over 300.000 euros in total", it is stated in the announcement of the institution managed by Vladimir Novović.
Each ministry allocates a part of "its" budget through public tenders to non-governmental organizations for specific projects in its area.
For example, the Agricultural Budget for 2017 was 16.900.092,50 euros.
Ivanović was arrested in a house in Doljani, and numerous police officers spent hours searching the villa, properties and vineyard owned by the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) functionary and his close relatives.
He was the head of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development from 2012 to 2016, and then moved to the DPS parliamentary benches until 2018. From then until May 2023, he was an economic adviser to the former President of Montenegro Milo Đukanović.
From 2016 to 2020, Milutin Simović held the position of Minister of Agriculture and Deputy Prime Minister while the Prime Minister was Dusko Markovic.
The arrested Katnić was the state secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development from January 2013 to October 2017 when the ministers were Petar Ivanović, briefly Budimir Mugoša and later Milutin Simović.
Indictment
At the end of October, the indictment against Ivanović was confirmed in the case of the Abu Dhabi fund, and the court proceedings in that case await the defendant Mugoša, whom the SDT accuses of abuse of position in this case.
Zoran Vukčević, the former head of the Investment and Development Fund (IRF), is also charged with unscrupulous work in the service.
The Abu Dhabi Development Fund (ADF) is a state agency of the United Arab Emirates, which in 2015 provided a loan of 50 million dollars to encourage agriculture in the north of Montenegro.
The former director of the Investment and Development Fund is also on the indictment for misappropriating a loan of 50 million Zoran Vukcevic, former director of the Directorate for Payments in the Ministry of Agriculture Blagota Radulović and appraiser Milan Adzic.
"The Special State Prosecutor's Office filed an indictment against the defendants, the former ministers of agriculture and rural development and the former director of the Directorate for IPARD payment in the then Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of PI, BM and BR, due to the well-founded suspicion that they committed the prolonged criminal offense of abuse of official position, during allocation of funds from the loan of the Abu Dhabi Development Fund, in the period from 2015 to 2017", said the special prosecutor earlier Vukas Radonjic.
At the end of February, Ivanovic said in the High Court that he did not understand the indictment of the SDT, because, he said then, some of the loans were returned in full, while the rest were covered by collateral that exceeded the amounts of the loans.
At that time, he stated that there was no damage to the state.
"Explain to me exactly what I am being charged with, because I cannot understand what this is about. I'm an economist, I'm not a lawyer, so someone explain it to me, if possible", Ivanović asked.
He asked for someone to answer him who benefited from the loan from the Abu Dhabi Fund.
"We are talking about six loans, two of which were duly repaid, with interest. Returning one is in progress. Collaterals were provided for three loans, the values of which exceed the amounts of the given loans. How did I benefit someone, if someone else did not initiate the collateral collection procedure", Ivanovic said.
Special account
The former Minister of Agriculture, Aleksandar Stijović, spoke several times about the alleged illegalities he found in that department, after the dismissal of the DPS authorities on August 30, 2020.
In February 2021, he spoke to journalists about the documentation on the loan from the Abu Dhabi Fund, saying then that former Minister Ivanovic had opened a special account at Prva Banka, which contained two tranches of loans from the Abu Dhabi Fund in the total amount of 29,6 million dollars, beyond the state treasury.
At that time, he also said that he submitted the complete documentation to the Special State Prosecutor's Office.
"The money was transferred to a special account in Prva banka, which is outside the state treasury system. We have no information about who opened this account, nor is there any information about it in the Ministry of Finance. All payments concerning state money must go through the treasury system," said Stijović at the time.
He also said that they asked Prva Banka for information on who opened a special account in Prva Banka where the money was paid according to the orders of former ministers Simović and Ivanović, while Nemanja Katnić "monitored the whole business" and Blagota Radulović approved.
Note: In the earlier version of the text, a fake online profile of X Petar Ivanović was mistakenly quoted, Vijesti apologizes to the readers and Mr. Ivanovic.
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