Milica Ivanović, an employee of the company "Aerodromi Crne Gore", testified today at the Higher Court in Podgorica at the continuation of the trial of the accused Duško Knežević in the "Aerodromi" case and said that she sent the email regarding the rescheduling of three million euros to Atlas Bank because the accused Dijana Zečević told her in a telephone conversation that there was an agreement between the directors about it and that she needed it for formalities.
Knežević is accused of damaging the "Montenegro Airport" to the tune of three million euros, together with the directors of his Atlas Bank, Marko Nikolić and Dijana Zečević.
According to the indictment, they obtained a benefit from Atlas Bank in the same amount because they did not return a deposit of three million euros after the term expired.
Ivanovic stated that she did not immediately inform her superiors about the content of the aforementioned email and that she, like the company, trusted Atlas Bank and the experience they had in doing business with them. She added that she was not the one who decided on the conclusion of the contract, but that her job description was to prepare the documentation and that the director would ultimately sign and decide. She said that it was a draft contract and that she had submitted all the documentation to the director's office.
She pointed out that the accused Dijana Zečević, then an employee of Atlas Bank, asked her to respond to an email regarding the rescheduling and that she understood that Zečević needed that response due to "some procedure, internally, and not as an official decision". And that she was not the superior to make decisions of that type, but the director. She said that director Danilo Orlandić did not give her an order to act on this matter.
At the trial, Zečević denied that she told Milica Ivanovic that there was an agreement with the directors to refinance the three million.
Lawyer Borivoje Đukanović cited the provisions of an article of the Law on Obligations, which, as he explained, refers to the fact that responding to an email, as Ivanović did, is actually accepting the offer and is considered to have concluded the contract.
"It all started with a phone call I received from Dijana Zečević on my office phone. She introduced herself and said that there was an agreement with the director on the rescheduling of three million euros. I asked her to send me a draft annex to the contract. She said she would and asked me to send her an email response for the rescheduling, for the sake of formality. I sent it to her via email, I felt that it was her internal need. She sent a draft annex to the contract, we checked it and I also sent it to our legal department," Ivanovic said before the court today, adding that she then submitted the documentation to the director's office.
She stated that she was later told that the annex to the contract had not been signed and that there were some other emails from Zečević that she did not respond to because she expected Vesna Jačmenica, her superior, to return from vacation in a few days and that she would respond to those emails.
"I did not inform anyone at the time about the content of the conversation with Dijana Zečević, not from the director's office or anyone else from the Airport," said Ivanovic, adding that she responded to Dijana Zečević's email regarding the consent to the rescheduling of three million euros because she thought she needed it internally, due to the procedure.
"There was simply a great deal of trust in everyone who worked at Atlas Bank and in Atlas Bank," she added.
She pointed out that the final decision on the rescheduling agreement is made by the director and that she had informed the director's office of the draft agreement.
"In this specific case, I had the obligation to prepare the documentation and submit it to the director, taking into account the draft and annex of the contract," she answered a question from lawyer Andrijana Razić, who represents Knežević.
When asked by the defense attorney, she replied that after this incident, no one from the Airport of Montenegro made any objections to her work.
"I really never suspected for a moment that someone wanted to deceive me. I sent her an email, she is the deputy director of Dijana Zečević, because the contract had expired, and she told me that there was an agreement with the director. I didn't see anything controversial in that, the annex is signed and the director decides on the contract," emphasized Ivanović.
The defense objected to her testimony. Attorney Zdravko Đukanović, among other things, said that the witness's testimony was full of illogicality. Attorney Razić stated that she believes that today's witness's testimony is crucial for the purposes of these proceedings.
"I believe that it will be very easy for the court to evaluate this testimony. This assessment can go in two directions. One of them is that Milica Ivanović, as an employee of ACG, acted on her own initiative, irresponsibly and unprofessionally, exceeding her authority. In this way, she herself misled Atlas Banka," she pointed out.
According to the indictment of the Special State Prosecutor's Office, the former owner of Atlas Banka, Duško Knežević, is accused of inciting his employees Nikolić and Zečević to abuse their position in business operations, that is, to appropriate funds from JP Aerodrom after the expiration of the term deposit.
"From the defense of the defendants Nikolić and Zečević, and the testimony of the witnesses Danil Orlandić, Vesna Ječmenica and Milica Ivanović, it indisputably follows that the deadline for the deposit in question expired on August 11, 2018, and that the injured company "Aerodromi Crne Gore" repeatedly demanded and gave instructions to return the said funds in the amount of 3.000.000 euros to the transaction account of the damaged company after the deadline. But that didn't happen," states the prosecutor in the explanation of the indictment.
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