The prosecution is investigating whether the Minister of Health, Budimir Šegrta, damaged the state budget from the position of director of the hospital in Meljini.
This was confirmed to "Vijesta" by the Basic State Prosecutor's Office (ODT) Herceg Novi, from which they announced that they had received an anonymous criminal complaint against Šegrt.
"It points out the illegality in the procedure of charging the services of PZU "Meljina" from the Health Insurance Fund of Montenegro, through unrealistically shown costs in the invoices that the hospital submitted for collection to the Fund, which were caused by patients staying longer in the hospital than the time required for treatment ", stated Herzegovinian state prosecutor Nikola Samardžić.
"Meljine" has a contract with the state Fund on the provision of health services for the citizens of Montenegro.
Samardžić stated that a case was formed in that prosecutor's office, based on an anonymous criminal report submitted to them by the Special Prosecutor's Office on January 13 of this year.
"The procedure is in the stage of collecting information in order to verify the allegations of the criminal complaint," the prosecutor stressed.
The apprentice did not answer the phone calls of "Vijesti" to comment on the report in which they accuse him of unrealistically presented expenses with the intention of damaging the budget of the state fund and to answer whether he was heard.
He was the leader of the "Meljine Complex" project, after the state sold that valuable property to a consortium led by Duško Knežević's Atlas Group in 2008.
Šegrt was the director of the hospital in Meljini, for which the privatization contract was not fulfilled, from March 2010 to March 2015. The investment obligations were not fulfilled, which Šegrt confirmed from the position of the Minister of Health, since he controlled the performance in that privatization in cooperation with the Department of Finance .
"In this prosecutor's office, there is no case related to the verification of the privatization procedure of the hospital in Meljine," answered Samardžić when asked if they are also verifying the documentation from the privatization period.
Atlas Group did not answer yesterday whether they were informed that the prosecution is dealing with the work of Šegrta in the hospital and whether it was reported after the opinion of the expert team for business control, whose formation they announced for Meljine, and what it found has not been made official.
The Director of the Health Insurance Fund, Kenan Hrapović, announced in mid-February that he prevented the former director of the private healthcare institution Meljine from collecting around 190 euros of unjustified invoiced services.
The Minister of Health announced that he will ask for Hrapović's dismissal if he does not resign, because there are many disagreements between them. He claims that they are not personal but "on the level of logic and principle". When asked if the announcement of Hrapović's dismissal was revenge for unresolved accounts from the period when Šegrt was the director of Meljine Hospital, the minister said that as far as he was concerned, there was no conflict at that time, but a "professional misunderstanding".
He questioned the consumption of medicines, the costs of sick leave and sending patients abroad for treatment. Hrapović replied that there is nothing controversial, but that the Fund spends the budget appropriately and legally.
Did they find out how the Apprentice worked in the hospital, is there a termination of the contract?
The government did not make a decision to terminate the contract with Knežević, and the evaluations of the ministries of health and finance suggest that this is due to unfulfilled obligations.
On November 18, Prime Minister Milo Đukanović announced the initiation of the procedure for terminating the contract for the hospital in Meljine. Yesterday, the Atlas Group did not answer what Knežević will do as a result of the eventual termination.
Initially, the Commission for Economic Policy of the Government decided to sign an annex to the contract with Knežević, and after the report of the Department of Finance and Health, the termination was announced.
The buyer, instead of the contracted 119 million euros, invested less than three million. The valuable complex was paid for with bonds, which were determined to have cost Knežević 11 million euros, and were formally equal to the contracted amount of 25 million euros. Councilors from Novi asked for termination also because the buildings are mortgaged for multimillion-dollar loans, which is beyond the contract.
Knežević announced at the end of November that they have hired a foreign expert team that is examining the complete documentation for "Meljine", including the operational business and the responsibility of the hospital.
"But also business with suppliers, because there are certain speculations that some of them are related persons to the then director of the hospital", Knežević made it official at the time. Atlas Group did not answer yesterday what that team determined during the analysis of the hospital's operations.
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