An account for money from the Abu Dhabi Development Fund for Montenegrin agriculture development projects could not be opened, nor could transactions be carried out without the order of the Ministry of Finance, according to a new letter from the Central Bank to the Ministry of Agriculture signed by Governor Radoje Žugić.
However, it was Žugić who was the Minister of Finance in 2015 when the disputed account was opened and when the first transactions were made from it to the selected companies. The state is now threatened with damages of 16 million euros, which is the amount of the debts of six out of ten companies that received these privileged loans. The Protector of State Interests is now unsuccessfully trying to collect that money by blocking accounts and activating mortgages on property of disputed value and status.
The Prosecutor's Office launched an investigation into this case, while a request was made to waive the immunity of the then Minister of Agriculture, and now DPS MP Petar Ivanović, for whom there are only documents that he participated in opening the disputed account and using the money.
The loan taken from the Abu Dhabi Fund is guaranteed by the state, and on July 15, a new installment of about 1,4 million dollars came due. However, the money was in a disputed account that was found to have been opened illegally and cannot be used, which is why the correspondence between the ministries and the Central Bank has been going on for months.
On June 24, Minister of Agriculture Aleksandar Stijović sent a letter to the Central Bank to get involved in solving the problem and to provide support so that the Investment and Development Fund can pay due claims.
Žugić replied to the letter that the opening and use of these accounts is provided for by the Law on the Central Bank, while it is regulated in detail by the contract between the CBCG and the Ministry of Finance.
"The Central Bank opens and maintains accounts for the execution of payment transactions from those accounts based on the order - the request of the Ministry of Finance (now the Ministry of Finance and Social Welfare)", it was stated in the answer of Žugić.
He states that the CBCG is not a contracting party in the arrangement with the Abu Dhabi Fund and that it does not have the legal authority to participate in solving issues arising from that contractual relationship.
"So, in this particular case, the Central Bank is only competent to open and maintain accounts for the execution of payment transactions from those accounts, and only on the basis of orders - requests from the Ministry of Finance and Social Welfare. Understanding your efforts to overcome the situation, the CBCG remains open to cooperation in the part related to the data and information available to the CBCG, which can be submitted in accordance with the law", stated Žugić.
Even these correspondences did not solve the problem of how Montenegro will reduce the damage caused by the way of contracting and selecting mostly unsuccessful companies that will receive multi-million loans with state guarantees.
Nothing was possible without Žugić, but his signature is nowhere to be found
In this new letter, Governor Žugić confirmed that the disputed account could not be opened in 2015, nor could transactions be carried out without his signature as the then Minister of Finance. However, all that happened, but Žugić's signature is nowhere to be found.
In the archives of the Ministries of Agriculture and Finance and the Investment Development Fund, there is no document anywhere about the state guarantee, which also had to be signed by the then Minister of Finance Žugić. The government has announced that it will request the original of this document from the Abu Dhabi Fund, because it is simply unbelievable that the document on the provision of a state guarantee of 50 million dollars has disappeared.
There are documents in which Ivanović asks the then director of Prva Banka, Darko Radunović, to open the disputed account and that he and his assistant in the ministry are the only ones to have deposited signatures for all payments and disbursements. A year later, Radunović became the Minister of Finance and succeeded Žugić, who became the governor. The unanswered question is how Prva banka could open the disputed account, if they did not have the most important document - the order from Minister Žugić.
According to the documents previously published by "Vijesti", Prva banka only sent a letter to the IRF in October 2018, when nine out of ten disputed loans had already been approved, that it was not possible to make transactions from the disputed account. After that, the Central Bank of Serbia issued an opinion that it was still possible, and ten loans were disbursed. There is no Žugić's signature on that document either, but it was signed by Andrija Jovović, director of the Payment Transaction Sector, in front of the CBCG.
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