Trial in the "Apartments" case, Piperović: The defendants are not officials

Lawyer Nikola Martinović said that ASK created confusion

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The building that houses the High Court in Podgorica, Photo: Boris Pejović
The building that houses the High Court in Podgorica, Photo: Boris Pejović
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

The trial in the "Apartments" case, in which members of the Commission for Resolving Housing Issues of the Government of Montenegro from 2016-2020, are charged with abuse of official position, continued today at the Higher Court in Podgorica.

Defense lawyers pointed out to the court that this is a political proceeding, as there are two different letters from the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (ASK), which refer to the same matter.

Lawyer Nikola Martinović said that ASK created confusion. In a statement to the media after the main trial hearing, lawyer Zoran Piperović said:

"What ASK said does not correspond at all with the allegations of the prosecution. The prosecution deals with the term "officials" in the indictment, and ASK says in its letter what and who public officials are. These are two categories. Here, I have been saying this from the beginning, there is only one thing at stake, whether the accused Bošković and others are official persons or not. And it is evident that they are not. The rest of the evidence is irrelevant, because this is only a legal issue," Piperović emphasized.

Regarding the two conflicting letters from ASK that were submitted to the court, he clarified.

"In the first letter, ASK says that they do not have the status of officials. Some colleagues, probably rightly, claim that political pressure was exerted on ASK, perhaps it was," said Piperović.

He added that considering what was said in the second letter, which is diametrically opposed to the first letter, it clearly shows that something is wrong.

"Or the ASK was shown the indictment. The fact that Predrag Bošković was the Minister of Education means nothing from the aspect of what the operational activities of the Housing Relations Commission were. So, he did not act as a minister, but as a member of the Commission appointed by the Government, and that has no legal connection," said lawyer Piperović.

Defendant Predrag Bošković said in his defense before the court in October last year that this was a political process.

"I am completely clean. I have not taken anything for myself. Not a single apartment. This is an absolutely politically rigged process," said former DPS MP Predrag Bošković at the trial in the Higher Court in Podgorica.

"Neither I nor the other defendants did anything illegal. The government's housing policy is not the policy of Predrag Bošković and the other defendants. It all started in the run-up to the 2020 elections with a criminal complaint against the then government, which was dismissed in September of that year. Nothing happened for months. After a vote of no confidence in the government of Dritan Abazović, he filed a criminal complaint. Again, nothing happened until my meeting with the US Special Envoy for the Western Balkans, Gabriel Escobar. At that time, the immunity of the MPs who were members of the Government's Housing Commission was requested," said Bošković.

The spokesman of the SDT, prosecutor Vukas Radonjić, announced earlier that the Special Department for Trials of Criminal Offenses of Organized Crime, Corruption, Terrorism and War Crimes of the High Court in Podgorica submitted an immediate indictment against the defendants Predrag Bošković, Budimir Šegrt, Suad Numanović, Sanja Vlahović , Ivan Brajović, Dražen Miličković, Damir Šehović, Dragica Sekulić, Osman Nurković, Suzana Pribilović, Jelena Radonjić and Aleksandar Jovićević, due to the existence of well-founded suspicions that, in the period from 2016 to 2020, as members of the Commission for Housing Affairs of the Government of Montenegro Gore, as a co-perpetrator, committed the extended criminal offense of abuse of official position, for which a prison sentence of two to 12 years is prescribed.

"The defendants are charged with the fact that, contrary to the Decision on the method and criteria for solving the housing needs of officials, which stipulated that the solution of housing needs is realized according to the plan for solving housing needs that contains the amount of funds for granting loans to improve housing conditions, that can grant a loan to improve housing conditions in the amount of up to 15.000 euros, and that the amount of the loan is determined based on the scope of work assessed by the expert committee of the then Property Administration, without a plan for solving housing needs and assessment by the expert committee of the Administration, approved and granted housing loans for improvement of living conditions for 119 public officials and employees in state bodies and state administration bodies, in amounts between 17.500 and 40.000 euros, thus benefiting them and causing damage to the budget of Montenegro, in the total amount of 2.604,740,59 euros. Radonjić explained then.

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