Former President of the Supreme Court Vesna Medenica she asked the judge several times Hasnije Simonović to make decisions that suited her, but she refused, saying that those cases had already been concluded.
The two of them corresponded about this via the Telegram app.
Less than a month after she resigned from her position under political pressure, Medenica called the judge, otherwise her godmother, about a dispute between the company "Carine" and the Municipality of Plužine.
The owner of the company Carine is Cedomir Popović, with whom Medenica is also in a godfather relationship.
Due to the registration of ownership rights over the land, more than half of which is arable in Piva, the municipality of Plužine has been in dispute against his company for years, but all decisions made in their favor were annulled in 2009 when the Law on Property and Legal Relations was passed, which transformed the right of use into the right of ownership.
After that, the Municipality asked Popović to collect real estate taxes, from then until the beginning of 2012, when the agricultural company was declared bankrupt.
"I can't catch you on one thing, and how you're working like crazy so I don't get late. Some tax for Pišče. Municipality of Plužine and 'Customs'," Medenica sent to the Supreme Court judge on January 20, 2021.
Judge Simonović replied that it had already been completed and submitted to the registry office, but Medenica then claimed that the appraiser had "inflated" the value...
"Awww, how he's grabbing. It's some kind of appraiser hired by the Municipality and they inflated the value. There's an earlier decision by the Administrative Court than the one being examined now. There's also a purchase and sale contract for a few cents, and that was at the time of the appraisal. How he's grabbing that from me," Medenica wrote to her.
She gets an explanation from the judge that a $2,5 million loan was taken out on the land. Then she writes why she was effective, but also that there was nothing they could do to overturn that decision:
"I didn't have any completed cases, only 4, so I had to (there is a loan agreement for $2.500.000 in the case, so an assessment was made of part of the property, whose market value is close to the one that the Revenue Administration found, and it's not all agricultural land, as stated in the accounting, but there is a lot of construction, forest and other land, according to the cadastre, which is worth much more (nothing could be done in our country in terms of cancellation)").
"It is what it is," Medenica concludes.
The company "Agro Carine doo" from Podgorica received a loan of 2,5 million dollars, which Simonović mentioned at the time, for the expansion of a sheep farm, the production of primary agricultural products, and the connection of agriculture and tourism on the Pišče and Piva rivers.
According to official data from the Central Register of Business Entities, that company was deleted on July 20, 2017, and its founder was the company "Carine Podgorica", owned by Čedomir Popović.
"Vijesti" previously reported that according to data from the balance sheet for 2016, the company "Agro Carine" invested 66.685 euros in fixed assets, while it deposited 2.109.395 euros, as they are in the short-term financial placements position.
After Medenica's arrest in May 2022, Popović told "Vijesti" that he had no information that the judge was being investigated by the Special State Prosecutor's Office for court cases in which his company was one of the parties.
He also said at the time that their company had several disputes before Montenegrin courts, and that they had never influenced the decisions in any way:
"And in the past two years alone, the Supreme Court has ruled in several disputes, after which 'Customs' paid out almost 400.000 euros," Popović said at the time.
She also asked about mothers.
Three months after asking about that case, Medenica sent the judge an urgent request for another case on April 23rd, with the message: "This was sent to me from HN, you know who..."
The godmother then replies that she will check, but that judging by the number of cases, it has been completed: "Same as the other mothers."
"This is Vesna Vučković's case, I think we reviewed it yesterday (after it was overturned by the Constitutional Court) and it seems to me that we overturned it and returned it to the Administrative Court for a new decision. Check this out, because we were 'weighing' what to do, so it was either to confirm and strengthen the reasons or to overturn it, I think we overturned it in the end," Simonović answers her after an hour.
Medenica sends her a message saying that she called Vesna, but that she didn't answer.
After ten minutes, she receives a message from Judge Simonović:
"The case is now Už 3/21 and we have terminated it, now Vesna tells me"...
Court documents that "Vijesti" has had access to show that the decision in that case was made the day before.
The panel, chaired by Judge Stanka Vučinić, and including Judges Simonović and Vukčević, then adopted the request for review of the court decision, overturned the Administrative Court's verdict, and returned the case to them for retrial and decision-making.
In that case, JV from Novljan was in dispute with the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, because they rejected her appeal against the decision of the Center for Social Work for the Municipality of Herceg Novi, which rejected her request for recognition of the right to compensation based on the birth of three or more children.
Bonus video:
