Regarding the new law that should solve the problem of loans that Hypo Alpe Adria Bank (HAAB) once approved in Swiss francs, the Central Bank announced on Wednesday that it considers the proposed legal text inapplicable.
Judging by the reactions, it seems that the assessment of the Central Bank of Montenegro (CBCG) will be as sustainable as the position of the loan beneficiaries in the Swiss, which the so-called currency clause brought to a hopeless position.
In the last days of August, the Montenegrin Parliament should discuss the Bill on the conversion of loans in Swiss francs into euros, which the Central Bank of Montenegro says contains a number of ambiguities and contradictions that would cause numerous dilemmas and make its implementation impossible.
"The newly proposed solutions would put credit users in an unequal position," the Central Bank said in a statement.
The lawyer of the Center for Consumer Protection and the legal representative of users of loans granted in Swiss francs, Dragomir Ćalasan, told RSE that the CBCG gave an opinion and attached amendments.
"We accepted 90 percent of their views. We disagreed on only two or three items. We were ready to find a common language with the representatives of the CBCG", said Ćalasan, adding that the CBCG, although this was also the position of the Assembly, turned a deaf ear to everything.
Lawyer Dragomir Ćalasan says that the Central Bank, in addition to disrespecting the views of the parliament, ignores the decisions of the Supreme Court and the High Court in Podgorica that this law also applies to banks, other financial organizations and third parties, i.e. that capital cannot be protected with two mechanisms. : variable interest rate and currency clause.
Ćalasan adds that the representatives of the users of loans in Swiss francs met on Thursday with the Minister of Finance, Raško Konjević, who will organize a joint meeting with the representatives of the Central Bank.
"The minister listened to our arguments and I think he accepted them. He assumed the role of a kind of mediator so that the proposed law would be adopted by a convincing majority, which is in our interest, but it should also be in the interest of the CBCG," says Ćalasan.
The reaction of the Central Bank to the Bill on the conversion of loans in Swiss francs into euros is also unsatisfied by its proponent, MP and president of the opposition Movement for Change, Nebojša Medojević, who recalls that he had previously warned that the CBCG was very responsible for placing such toxic and speculative loans on the Montenegrin market, especially bearing in mind the dangerous risk of changing the exchange rate of the Swiss franc and the euro.
"The Central Bank participated in the HAAB advertising campaign and, contrary to its constitutional role, encouraged citizens to take these loans. Those who did that became prisoners of HAAB, so the responsibility of the CBCG is huge from the very beginning," Nebojša Medojević told Radio Free Europe, recalling that no one from the CBCG responded to my very serious accusations regarding control that was carried out in HAAB.
Medojević warns that big money is at stake, which can be a motive for corruption.
"If the new legal solution is adopted, HAAB and the people associated with it will be left without 200-250 million euros of extra profit, and that is too big a cake for someone not to try to corrupt, that is, illegally influence the CBCG, perhaps even the deputies of the ruling "The Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) will try to protect its huge interest," Medojević said.
The law on the conversion of loans approved in Swiss francs should relax the position of their users, of whom there were about four hundred in Montenegro and who, due to the dizzying jump in the value of the Swiss franc in relation to the euro, found themselves in a hopeless situation in which many of them , after several years of installment payments, owed as much as at the beginning.
The opinion of the Central Bank on the Draft Law caused negative reactions, but Zoran Jelić, an official of the ruling DPS and a member of the Parliamentary Committee for Economy and Finance, in a statement to RSE, still left the door through which the law would have to pass open.
"We will see what happens during the plenary session. We will consider the opinion of the CBCG, the positions of the Ministry of Finance and the loan beneficiaries, and after the analysis we will take a final position," concluded Jelić.
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