The president of the Atlas group, Duško Knežević, for whom the prosecution has issued a warrant due to suspicions that he is the organizer of a group engaged in money laundering and tax evasion, has for years had on his payroll a large number of high-ranking officials of the ruling DPS, who managed his private companies or were in charge of the most confidential business operations.
Knežević has been publicly wishing for a split in the ruling party for days and is pinning his hopes on what he says is a "healthy fabric" of the DPS, led by Prime Minister Duško Marković. Some of the high-ranking officials of DPS covered the most responsible functions in his companies for years, were in charge of management, and by all accounts enjoyed great trust from the president of Atlas Group, as an employer, considering the functions they covered. Now the DPS calls Knžević a fugitive tycoon, an unscrupulous person who uses lies and intrigues from London to avoid facing an investigation into multimillion-dollar embezzlement. They also accuse him of being to blame for the collapse of his empire, even though his companies were headed by high-ranking DPS officials for years.
In 2007, the deputy mayor of Podgorica, Časlav Vešović, was the executive director of Knežević's company "Ridley Park" from Podgorica. Among the founders of this company were two offshore companies: "Cosmos ltd." and "Newcom Worldwide ltd.", also associated with Knežević, while the third founder was the Greek Teodoros Karagiannis. The company "Ridley Park" managed Knežević's other company "Attika Land", which was supposed to build a luxury settlement above Mogren beach in Budva.
Today, Vešović belongs to the younger generation of high-ranking DPS officials in the capital of Montenegro.
"Vijesti" came into possession of an extract from the pledge register from May 2007, according to which he was the authorized person of the company "Ridley Park" when a 100 percent share in "Attika Land" was pledged, with an estimated value of slightly more than six million euros. and in favor of the Greek Piraeus Bank.
Before the company "Ridley Park", the company "Attika Land" was managed by the offshore company "Fiesta Investmemnt ltd." registered in Mauritius, which Americans and Montenegrin prosecutors suspect in the "Telekom" corruption affair from 2004.
For many years, the former director general of RTVCG Goran Sito Rakočević, whose son Nikola Rakočević is today one of the confidants of the younger generation of DPS parliamentarians, held high positions in companies of the Atlas Group, during and after his diplomatic service.
The company "Fiesta investments" has been mediating the broadcasting of the RTCG satellite program for a whole decade. This offshore company, whose owner and address have never been reliably established because its addresses ranged from Podgorica, through London to Mauritius, signed a contract for the lease of satellite capacity with RTCG in 1998, whose general director at the time was Goran Rakočević.
During his diplomatic service in Zagreb, Rakočević was also a member of the Board of Directors of Knežević's Adriatic Fair (in the center of Budva), on the basis of which Knežević provided the most valuable collateral given in favor of the Greek Piraeus Bank, which his critics from DPS now call money laundering and robbing depositors .
Rakočević was also in the administration of the Adriatic Fair from September 2011 to May 2016.
High-ranking DPS official Miodrag Vuković was the dean of the Faculty of Law of the Mediterranean University, and his nephew Ivan Vuković has been the mayor of Podgorica since last year. President of the Judicial Council of Montenegro, Professor Dr. Mladen Vukčević was at one time, before Vuković, the dean of the Knežević Faculty of Law at the Mediterranean University, and today, according to information from the website, he is only a lecturer.
The rector of the Mediterranean University was also Slobodan Backović, former Minister of Education, and among the deans and lecturers of Knežević's Faculty of Tourism in Bar, before being appointed to the ministerial position, was Sanja Vlahović, a high-ranking official of the DPS from Bar, who is today the Ambassador of Montenegro to Rome.
The director of Knežćević's Meljina Hospital was Budimir Šegrt, who later became DPS's Minister of Health and is now the ambassador to Poland. Kneževiće recently said that Milo Đukanović asked him to let Šegrt be the director of Meljin, and that he and the president of DPS planned to develop that business together.
Milo to say who told him the confidential information
In yesterday's supplement to the criminal complaint against the Governor of the Central Bank of Montenegro, Radoje Žugić, and the temporary manager of Atlas Bank, Tanja Terić, submitted by the defense of Duško Knežević to the High State Prosecutor's Office three days ago, it is requested that the President of Montenegro, Milo Đukanović, be questioned as a witness.
They state that the president does not have any constitutional powers related to the banking sector, but that in the show "Crosswords" which was broadcast on February 14.02.2019, XNUMX. on television Prva, stated that he has knowledge that a person who is not a shareholder of the bank will participate in the recapitalization procedure.
"The president could not get this kind of information through official means, so the defense suggested that the prosecution question him about the circumstances from where he knew this information. In the supplement to the criminal complaint, Radoje Žugić and Tanja Terić are accused of having illegally transmitted this information to the President of Montenegro," Atlas Group announced.
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