Not counting the multimillion-dollar obligations for utilities for the newest wing of Porto Montenegro called Boka Place, the company Adriatic Marinas (AM) from Tivat and its affiliated companies currently owe the Municipality of Tivat over seven million euros in fees for the development of construction land and show no intention of he pays off his obligations in the near future.
Due to the fact that the Municipality has in the meantime canceled the solutions for the calculation of utilities for Boka Place, which AM did not want to sign or pay, the construction site of that 100 million euro residential and business complex with an area of over 75.000 square meters is the largest wild construction site in the state of Montenegro, which is why the legal action of the Building Inspection and the Ministry of Ecology, Spatial Planning and Urbanism (MEPPU) is expected.
This was announced at a press conference organized by the Municipality of Tivat for the purpose of presenting the results of the economic and financial expert examination of inter-jurisdictional claims between the local administration and AM.
In recent months, at the invitation of the President of the Municipality Željko Komnenović (NP), one of the most respected experts in financial forensics in the region, international court expert Nenad Šipka from the Center for Forensic Research from Novi Sad, conducted the expert examination. Šipka, among other things, was also a financial expert in the case of KIPS against Montenegro, which the Government of Montenegro lost at the international court in Strasbourg and because of which the state had to pay multimillion-dollar compensation to a private company from Podgorica.
"With this city administration, we will not continue the practice from the previous period that a large investor, bypassing the Municipality of Tivat, makes an agreement with the Government, so that the consequences of that agreement are borne by the Municipality. We have been given the mandate of the citizens to protect the public interest of Tivat, and they are beginning to understand that. and investors with whom we want to have the best relations and cooperation and that their projects continue to develop, but that within the limits of the law, the local community in which they operate also directly benefits from them. We cannot have on one side the super-luxurious Porto Montenegro with all facilities at the highest world level and the same Luštica Bay on the other side, and between them the city of Tivat, which has no money to build even the most basic infrastructure that its inhabitants need, such as schools, boulevards, sewage system and the like," said Komnenović, reminding of the procedure of his predecessor Siniša Kusovac (DPS), who signed a contract with AM in the summer of 2018, in which he forgave that company, on behalf of the Municipality, 5,6 million euros of debts due by that time for utilities.
Consent to such a move by Kusovac was previously given by 17 DPS councilors in the local parliament, justifying that Tivat has an obligation to forgive Porto utilities in the speech on the sale of Arsenal from 2006, which was signed by then Prime Minister Milo Đukanović on behalf of the Government as the seller and Canadian businessman Peter Mank on behalf of PM Securities as a buyer.
The municipality of Tivat was not a signatory to that contract, but it suffered its harmful consequences because it was left without millions of revenues from utilities, on three completely controversial grounds - the costs of the demolition of the Arsenal facilities, environmental rehabilitation of the site and "the area of facilities in the Arsenal before 1945".
"We regret to contribute to the development of Porto Montenegro because that project is of great importance for Tivat and for the entire country, but we do not want it to be done in the way that the former government did - by uncritically fulfilling every order and controversial agreement of investors and the Government in Podgorica We think that our relations with AM should be returned to the beginning of the story, and therefore we decided to reduce mutual claims to a clear, legal and understandable way for every citizen of Tivat. That is why we hired legal advisors from the renowned Belgrade law office "Savić" and economic forensics expert Nenad Šipka to determine the true state of the mutual claims of the Municipality and the AM", Komnenović said, adding that he is aware that "this problem has an economic, legal and political dimension", but that for now, they only want to deal with the economic and protect the interests of the citizens of Tivat, but and the rest of the investors present in that city who did not receive the benefits that the state gave to AM.
He emphasized that in the case of the forgiveness of millions of utilities to that company, it is indicative that the EU delegation in Montenegro requested that it be investigated by the Agency for the Protection of Competition as a possible illegal state aid to that company, but that the procedure, which was supposed to be completed in 60 days, it did not end even after almost two years.
"The contract on the write-off of 5,6 million euros of utilities that Kusovac signed with AM on behalf of the Municipality of Tivat in 2018 is, according to Article 42 of the Law on Obligations, void and inadmissible and, as such, cannot produce legal effect. The municipality had no legal basis to forgive this debt of that company related to Porto Montenegro facilities built in 2015 and 2017 and for which there were already utility bills and contracts on their payment with the Municipality accepted and signed by AM. The investor therefore accepted his obligations but he has not settled them until today. Therefore, applying the current Montenegrin regulations and the legal interest rate of the CBCG of 8%, I have calculated that as of today, the unpaid obligations of AM to the Municipality of Tivat amount to slightly over 7 million and 39 thousand euros. On the other hand, Optina Tivat he doesn't have a single cent of his unpaid obligations to the company AM". pointed out financial forensic expert Nenad Šipka.
He, who will soon defend his doctorate in the field of legal sciences, explained in detail all other illegal aspects in the fiscal-financial relations of that investor, the state and the Municipality in the past years when DPS, SDP, SD, BS and HGI were in power. The contract from 2018, by the way, was previously subject to review by the Special State Prosecutor's Office of Montenegro, but Milorad Katnić and his colleagues announced that it was legal and that the actions of the mayor of Kusovac, who caused damage of 5,6 million euros to the city , allegedly no crime.
In addition to seven million euros, to which the debts of the Port have grown so far, the Municipality of Tivat is also demanding a few million euros from AM for unpaid utilities for the new business-residential complex Boka Place, which was started last year. The director of the municipal Directorate for Investments and Development, which calculates utility bills, Budimir Cupara reminded that on June 15, AM was handed four decisions on the calculation of utility bills for the same number of buildings in Boka Place, for a total amount of about 1,22 million euros.
The fifth solution was not completed because AM reported a significant reduction in the area of that building in the meantime, although its dimensions remained the same. The auditor of the project, from whom the Municipality requested an explanation, has been silent about it for ten days.
"The AM did not complain or object to the four decisions that were made, and they became final on July 1, and the next day the deadline for payment began. We were waiting for the representatives of the AM to respond to the signing of those contracts and to agree on the dynamics of paying their obligations, but there was no response from them. Therefore, according to the law, those decisions on August 2nd were revoked and they are no longer valid, which means that AM formally no longer even has a valid construction application for Boka Place. This means that they should not build those facilities, but they still do it smoothly. In order for AM to repeat the process and report the construction of Boka Place, they have to submit new requests for utility bills, but they will now be increased by 50% because in the meantime a new, amended the municipal Decision on utilities, according to which they increased in price in the Porto Montenegro area," said Cupara.
He pointed out that in the meantime, AM appealed against the cancellation of the original decisions on the calculation of utilities for Boka Place, and since August 12, the second-instance procedure at the MEPPU is ongoing.
"They are now asking the Municipality to sign a new Memorandum of Understanding that would overcome this situation and ensure the continuation of the works on Boka Plece so that they would not stop because AM from October 1st without a construction report will be in big trouble about it. They are asking that their payment obligations according to the budget of the Municipality of Tivat are postponed and to issue them a certificate for that, but we will not sign any memorandum and agreement with AM, until MEPPU declares their appeals and until AZZK finally makes a decision on the legality of state aid from 2018. in the form of 5,6 million euros forgiven," said Cupara.
He emphasized that from everything that has happened so far, he can see that "the people who run Porto Montenegro do not want to positively influence the budget of Tivat through the payment of utilities".
"We will insist that these funds be paid to the Municipality, because utilities in the amount of 170 to 210 eu per square meter apartment that Porto sells to buyers for 6 to 8 thousand euros are not really a big burden for their business," said Cupara, reminding that DSL Arsenal, according to Porto Montenegro is being demolished, predicts that with its implementation the Municipality will earn a total of 26 million euros from utilities, and the local administration has not even collected a total of 5 million on a slow basis.
Komnenović emphasized that "for now", he does not have the impression that ministers Jakov Milatović and Ratko Mitrović, who are involved in solving this problem, "stand by the AM", to the detriment of the interests of the Municipality of Tivat, but that he also understands the delicate position of the Government in which it is found after Aman, as a significant foreign investor, recently left Montenegro.
"We supported and will continue to support the Porto Montenegro project under the jurisdiction of the Municipality, because we believe that it has brought new value to Tivat and Montenegro, but we will not allow it to be destroyed at the expense of the public interest of the citizens of Tivat who must have concrete benefits through the collection of utilities and other fees which all other investors also pay. We believe that this can be achieved through dialogue and agreement, before resorting to possible lawsuits and court proceedings," he concluded.
SDP overthrows the government in Tivat because of Port's utilities, not because of Serbs?
Alluding to the fact that the SDP Presidium suddenly decided last Sunday to withdraw the support given by that party in the Tivat SO to the minority government of the civil list of the NP, BF and GB, Komnenović said that now it can be seen that the various events with a Serbian national sign in the past months in Tivat which the SDP called, "are not a real reason to think about their support".
"The real reason for such a move by them is exactly what we talked about today, the real reason is their and DPS's political story from the time when they worked together and negotiated an arrangement for Arsenal and Porto and in which they led this entire project around utilities and Porto Montenegro," Komnenović pointed out, adding that "if you sum it all up and take it away, you get this clear today's result".
"It is certain, however, that this local government of Tivat will fight to the end to protect the public interest. Law, justice and public interests are much more important for the citizens of Tivat than even the economy and anything else. Justice and the protected public interest must feel every citizen of Tivat - from Krtrol to Lepetan, and there will be no compromise with that," the mayor concluded, adding that he doesn't care if the money owed to Tivat ends up being paid by Porto or the Government of Montenegro.
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