Vukotić in the millions, "Plantaže" on its knees

The former president of the Board of Directors of Plantaž and the creator of the neoliberal concept of development of the Montenegrin economy, Veselin Vukotić, who was recently arrested by order of the Special State Prosecutor's Office, reported an average of around 100 euros per year based on wages and benefits in state and private companies and institutions.

Thus, in 2020, he reported earnings of around 143 thousand euros, not counting the compensation of the chairman of the Board of Directors of Plantaž, which he did not show. He received 1.045 euros per month from the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts (CANU), or about 12,5 thousand euros for that year.

To those data Center for Investigative Journalism (CIN-CG) came by analyzing Vukotić's property records for the period from 2014 to 2020, when he was the head of Plantaž. Vukotić's income from 2020 alone is 17 times higher than the average annual salary in Montenegro, and 26 times higher than the minimum, which was increased to 450 euros per month last year.

The remuneration from the Institute for Strategic Studies (ISSP), of which he is the founder, amounted to 14.000 euros in 2020, and the basic salary at the University of Donja Gorica (UDG) is 1.837 euros per month, i.e. 22.044 euros for the year. In 2020, the salary for supplementary work and work contracts at faculties within the UDG, of which Vukotić is a co-founder, amounted to a total of 94,4 thousand euros.

Although ISSP and UDG are private institutions, they are largely financed from the state budget. ISSP received valuable projects from the state, while UDG began to receive money from the budget soon after its establishment.

In 2019, Vukotić reported an income of 102 thousand euros, of which he received 749,67 euros per month from Plantaž, i.e. 8.996 euros for the year.

Vukotić's official income in 2018 was 97,5 thousand euros, of which 8,4 thousand euros from Plantaž. In 2017, Vukotić had 91 thousand euros from wages and benefits (7,2 thousand from Plantaže), in 2016 127,5 thousand (from Plantaže 6.132), and in 2015 about 81 thousand (from Plantaže 6.115 euros).

In 2014, he reported a total income of 52,8 thousand, of which six thousand euros from Plantaž.

Vukotić was appointed as the President of the Board of the state-owned company for the first time on June 30, 2014, and was re-elected on December 30, 2016 and remained in that position until September 2020, so he was dismissed after the DPS lost power in the parliamentary elections.

However, Vukotić has been a member of the Board of Directors of Plantaž since 2006, although he advocated for the privatization of state property and was the vice-president of the Privatization Council since its formation in 1998. Before that, he was a member of the Communist Government of Montenegro (Prime Minister Vuko Vukadinović) and a member of the Federal Government of the SFRY (Prime Minister Ante Marković).

Filip Mirovski, a professor at the American University of Notre Dame, tells CIN-CG that many advocates of neoliberal policy have gotten rich on its promotion.

"Taking away their ill-gotten gains is the beginning of a political response," Mirovski said.

Dušan Pajović from the Movement for Democracy in Europe 2025 (DiEM25), one of the founders of which is the former Greek Minister of Finance Janis Varoufakis, tells CIN-CG that the fact that the main proponent of privatization sat on the Board of Directors of a state-owned company is one of the many paradoxes that capitalism and oligarchs carry with them.

"State companies, subsidies, social assistance reimbursements, various grants and the like are viewed with disgust only if those who advocate capitalism for others do not profit from it," said Pajović.

He says that neoliberalism is generally fatal for everyone, except for one percent of the richest people, and in Montenegro there is a transition between semi-successful real socialism and "predatory, imperial and wild capitalism".

Pajović believes that all oligarchs should be legally investigated, especially those who got rich during the greatest misery in the Balkans.

"But in any case, I would refrain from details until the verdict is passed, and I called on the parties not to attribute the arrests to themselves and not to put pressure on the prosecution from any side, considering that all links of the judicial system must be independent," said Pajović.

The Director of the MANS Research Center, Dejan Milovac, told CIN-CG that Veselin Vukotić is an excellent example of how impunity and a complete lack of responsibility for the decisions made can have unfathomable consequences for state-owned enterprises.

"Now it is no longer a secret that the model of privatization advocated by Professor Vukotić was realized in the form of the so-called initial accumulation of capital, which made it possible to create a 'new entrepreneurial elite' at the expense of the state budget and the interests of workers," said Milovac.

In that process, as he added, state ownership was stigmatized as a wrong way of managing state resources, and privatization, which was supposed to be a flywheel for new economic growth, ended with the destruction of numerous Montenegrin companies.

"Only a handful of 'winners of the Montenegrin transition', who were later referred to by the then prime minister and today's president of the country, Milo Đukanović, as ``those who managed'', Milovac reminded.

Vukotić and five other former members of the Board of Directors of Plantaž were arrested in June on suspicion of embezzlement in the business with the briquette factory, in which the state-owned company was allegedly damaged for several million euros. In addition to Vukotić, Božo Mihailović, Duško Perović, Đorđije Rajković and Sead Šahman were also arrested and detained. Former marketing director Anica Hajduković was released after the hearing to defend herself. This week, both Šahman and Rajković were released to defend themselves.

The SDT announced that they are suspected of having made the decision to conclude a harmful contract on an out-of-court settlement between the state company and the private firm OMP Engineering.

In the settlement process, from March to April 2020, and after the failed deal with the briquette factory, the state-owned company undertook to pay the company, which was founded in 2009 by Oleg Obradović, Miodrag Ivanović and Predrag Bošković (DPS MP), who later quit his job, paid 350.000 euros and transferred ownership of 37.000 square meters of land in Donji Kokoti to them.

Because of this, at the end of August, the former longtime executive director of Plantaž, Verica Maraš, was arrested.

In the criminal report of the new management of Plantaž from February this year, it is stated that Maraš, in the criminal group formed by Vukotić, accepted that, on his order, at the meetings of the Board of Directors, she represented the position that the settlement with OMP was a good decision for the company and that she was giving incomplete data in order to create a false image that OMP's investment is significantly higher than Plantaža.

As stated, she gave the Board of Directors information from 2014 that Plantaže invested around 450.000 euros, and OMP 1.122.000 euros, although as the executive director she knew that since then the total investments of Plantaže were significantly higher and that they exceeded the amount of the investment of OMP.

The business with the briquette factory is only one of the problems that Plantaže is facing. This once successful state-owned enterprise has been in financial problems for years, which were hidden by increasing the value of inventory, as warned by former financial director Valerija Saveljić.

Thus, after formally positive results in previous years, in 2020 a loss of as much as 18,8 million euros was reported, and in the last year of 20 million euros.

Workers' wages have been cut, and their payments are delayed because the company is in debt.

The wife has four apartments, and the daughters have three

According to the data of the Administration for Cadastre and State Property, Vukotić has no apartments registered in his name. However, he has about 5.787 square meters of land in Danilovgrad, Podanje, in the cadastral municipality of Novo selo, which he acquired by purchase. In that area, prices per square meter of land range from ten to 40 euros.

Vukotić's wife Ljiljana owns real estate in Podgorica, Danilovgrad, Herceg Novi and Sveti Stefan.

He has two apartments in Podgorica, one of 101 square meters and the other of 146 square meters, acquired by purchase.

The larger apartment is located in a building built by the Čelebić company, owned by Tomislav Čelebić - business partner of Veselin Vukotić and Milo Đukanović.

In that building, better known as Villa Čelebić, where high government officials live, a square meter costs around 3.000 euros, which means that Vukotić's apartment is worth almost half a million euros.

The second apartment is located in the Normal company building and was purchased on credit in 2010 for a total of 85 euros for a period of 180 months. That apartment is now worth around 200 because, according to real estate agency data, a square meter in this popular part of the city "over the Morača" exceeds 2.000 euros.

According to data from the cadastre, Ljiljana Vukotić has an apartment of 63 square meters in Sveti Stefan and a garage of 13 square meters, which she acquired by purchase. The price per square meter of an apartment in Sveti Stefan exceeds 5.000 euros, so this apartment could be worth around 300 euros. Ljiljana Vukotić bought a 34-square-meter apartment in Cetinje.

She also owns plots of several thousand square meters in the Municipality of Danilovgrad (Podanje), part of which she inherited and the rest she bought.

In Herceg Novi, in Luštica, he owns an orchard of 4.651 square meters. In the same place, he also owns a joint plot of 1.080 m2 with Olivija Ivanović, wife of Petar Ivanović, adviser to the president and Vukotić's associate. In Luštica, the price of a square meter of land is several hundred euros, so Ljiljana Vukotić's plots could be worth at least a million euros.

Ivanovic is a long-time business partner of Veselin Vukotić. They founded ISSP together, and Ivanovic is also a professor at UDG. They started their partnership while they were teaching at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Montenegro.

Vukotić's daughters Marija, Milica and Milena also have apartments in Podgorica (47, 62 and 79 square meters) in buildings where their mother has apartments or nearby.

Marija Vukotić has a 47-square-meter apartment in Villa Čelebić, worth around 150 euros. Milica has an apartment in the Normal company building of 62 square meters, the value of which is around 120 thousand euros, while Milena has an apartment nearby, in the Cijevna komerca building. Her apartment is 79 square meters and is worth around 150 euros.

Participation in valuable stock transactions

During 2020, Ljiljana Vukotić had a monthly pension of 420 euros, i.e. a total of 5.040 euros for the year.

In the company Megatrend co, which, according to media reports, was informally owned by her husband, she received a total of 2020 euros for royalties in 10.120.

In 2004, Ljiljana Vukotić was the executive director of that company, whose founder, according to official data, was Maja Boljević.

For years, the management of that company was mainly made up of Vukotić's former students from the Faculty of Economics, previously engaged in the Center for Entrepreneurship or ISSP.

Megatrend had an ownership stake in Monte adria broker-dealer, the first brokerage house registered in Montenegro and an intermediary in the most significant stock market transactions, such as the purchase and sale of Telekom shares and especially Elektroprivreda. In 2, the Italian company A2009A bought about 12 million shares of minority shareholders EPCG at a price of 8,4 euros per share, that is, for a total of about 100,98 million euros. Of that, the Monte Adria broker-dealer received 505 euros, based on a commission of half a percent. At that time, about seven thousand shareholders sold their shares.

As a result, the minority shareholders filed a lawsuit in 2013 against the Securities Commission (KHOV), the Central Depository Agency, the state and the Privatization Council, seeking the return of the money paid to the Monte adria broker-dealer, but their lawsuit was denied.

The economic crisis has shut down numerous brokerage houses since 2009, so Monte Adria was also liquidated in 2014, and according to the latest data from the Central Clearing Depository Company (former Central Depository Agency), the owners were the Trend fund with 49 percent of the shares, Mercator CO with 37,7 .13,14 percent and Megatrend with XNUMX percent.

The first bank of Montenegro, Aca Đukanović, the brother of Milo Đukanović, was the owner of 49 percent of Monte Adria broker-dealer shares from April 2009 to November 2010. The bank took the shares of the brokerage house because of unpaid loans.

According to data from the Central Register of Business Entities (CRPS), the executive director of Monte Adria Broker, founded in 2002, was Slovenian Damjan Hosta, and the member of the Board until 2010 was Petar Ivanović. In 2010, Vukotić's daughter Milica was also a member of the Board.

Vukotić is one of the creators of mass voucher privatization, in which the cream of the crop was collected by privatization funds and brokerage houses. Although the main idea of ​​mass voucher privatization was to distribute state property to citizens through vouchers, the funds took about 40 percent of the total number of vouchers, or about 500 million euros worth of capital.

Mercedes, colleges and actions in 17 companies

Among other assets, Vukotić has a Mercedes S550 from 2006, and his wife has a Mercedes A class from 2013 and a Mercedes B180 from 2013.

He also reported shares in 17 companies that are currently worth around 50 euros on the stock market. Vukotić has shares in Plantaže (78.047), Barska plovidba (2.988), Montenegrin electric transmission system (13.546), Telekom (3.087), Ulcinj Riviera (560), Atlas mont fund (13.000), UTIP Montenegro (2.400), Eurofund (225.034), Trend (57.700), HLT (36.647), Izbor Bar (10.000), Otranto (125), Montecargo (52). Telekom regularly distributes dividends to shareholders, as does Plantaže, while formally recording a profit. However, Vukotić did not report the dividend from the shares.

He is the co-founder of the company Univerzitats (25 percent), within which UDG operates, as well as 11 faculties within UDG. Vukotić's ownership share in the Faculty of International Economics, Finance and Business is 33,5 percent, the Faculty of Information Systems and Technologies 34,5 percent, the Faculty of Legal Sciences 12,5 percent, the Polytechnic 37,5 percent, the Faculty of Food Technology, Food Safety and Ecology 37,5, to the Faculty of Arts 12,5, to Sports Management 35, to the Faculty of Culture and Tourism 37,5, to the Faculty of Philology 12,5 and to the Faculty of Applied Science 37,5 percent.

Vukotić founded the UDG in 2008 with the current president of the state and leader of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) Milo Đukanović, businessman Tomislav Čelebić and former dean of the state Faculty of Law Dragan Vukčević.

An office building, garage and land of 16.438 square meters (3873/2) in Donja Gorica were registered to the company Univerzitats. The market value of this complex is difficult to calculate, but surely Vukotić's share here is worth millions.

Private University on the back of the state

The license to Vukotić and Đukanović University was given by Slavoljub Stijepović, actor of the Koverta affair and current advisor to the president, only a month after he was elected as the Minister of Education.

Stijepović issued a license to the University of Donja Gorica two years after it was founded, and then the Law on Higher Education was amended, and since then it has been stipulated that the Government will determine the number of students and the amount of funding for "study programs of public interest at private universities" in the future. .

Thus, the state helped the private sector to the detriment of the state university, even though Vukotić was declaratively against state interventionism. The Ministry of Education did not respond to CIN-CG's question about how much money UDG received from the budget.

Several former ministers work at UDG, as well as former Prime Minister Igor Lukšić. In addition to Petar Ivanović, lecturers at UDG include former Minister of Finance Milorad Katnić, former Minister of Economy Vladimir Kavarić, then Director of KHOV Zoran Đikanović, Advisor to the President of the State Boris Bastijančić...

Dejan Milovac states that after Vukotić entered into business with Đukanović personally and when the company Univerzitats, i.e. UDG, was founded with other winners of the transition, the protection of Vukotić from any responsibility for wrongly implemented privatizations was further strengthened.

In 1998, Vukotić founded the Institute for Strategic Studies and Forecasts, which, in addition to the state Monstat, produced statistical indicators and numerous government documents, such as Strategies for Development and Poverty Reduction, Strategy for Refugees and Displaced Persons... Creating strategies costs money several tens of thousands of euros.

Together with the founder and vice president of the Montenegro Business Alliance (MBA), former director of the Government Agency for the Promotion of Foreign Investments, former Minister of Agriculture, now MP and advisor to the President, Petro Ivanović, he founded the consulting company Center for Entrepreneurship in 1999. As can be seen on the company's website, their clients are numerous state institutions - the Agency for Insurance Supervision, the Agency for the Promotion of Foreign Investments of Montenegro, the Investment Development Fund of Montenegro, the Commission for Securities, the Ministries of Culture, Economy, Finance, Health, Sustainable of development and tourism, agriculture and rural development, Monstat...

Vukotić is no stranger to Sponge

This is not the first time Vukotić has been in prison in Spuz. He was also there in the spring of 1993, when he was suspected with the current director of KHOV, Zoran Đikanović, of financial fraud through the private company Ant komerc, in which Đikanović was the director and Vukotić was the chief adviser.

In the AB revolution, which was carried out under the baton of Slobodan Milošević and Serbia, in January 1989, Vukotić and Đukanović were comrades. Đukanović became the general secretary of the Union of Communists of Montenegro (SKCG) and Vukotić, once the president of the SKCG organization at Veljko Vlahović University, was the main author of the New Development Philosophy of the "Young, Beautiful and Smart" program, i.e. the new leadership of Montenegro led by Đukanović and Momir Bulatović.

In what was then Titograd, the 25th extraordinary congress of the SCMG was held from April 27 to 1989, XNUMX, and the opening speech was given by Vukotić, coordinator of the Presidency of the Central Committee of the Union of Communists (CKSK) of Montenegro.

"Everything that happened from October to today shows that the people were not manipulated either from the outside or from the inside, that they were not led by Chetnik sons but by the most progressive offspring of the young generation. "These events are not an act of hostility and a national sell-out of Montenegro, but a decision and will to restore dignity to the Montenegrin nation and to all those who live fraternally and in harmony in Montenegro," said Vukotić at the time.

At the end of 1989, SKCG proposed Vukotić for the position of Minister for Property Transformation in the federal government of the reformist Ante Marković.

At that stage, Đukanović was a supporter of the preservation of social property, while Marković advocated gradual privatization. Vukotić sided with Marković, deviated from the New Development Philosophy (which does not mention privatization) and the affair with Ant business followed.

According to some interpretations, Vukotić ended up in prison in 1993 because of DPS's revenge on "a Western-oriented professor of the Faculty of Economics who turned his back on them", after the collapse of the SFRY and the fall of Vlado Ante Marković.

But, after his release from prison, Vukotić became Đukanović's main economic strategist, promoter of neoliberalism in Montenegro, and later the idea of ​​a "micro-state" managed by a small group of, as he said, "market-proven".

Zoran Đikanović became the director of KHOV in 2000, and he still holds that position today.

Vukotić was also tried in the case of the privatization of Jugopetrol, when, according to the report of the NGO Group for Changes, he was suspected of having with the then director of the Agency for Economic Restructuring and Foreign Investment Branko Vujović, bypassing the legal procedure, awarded a multimillion-dollar consulting job to Mark Harrison's law firm. Harrison was paid about three million euros as a commission for consulting services.

In April 2007, they were acquitted, with the explanation that they did not make the illegal decision themselves.

"All the members who attended the 33rd session of the Privatization Council participated in making the decision," says the verdict of the Criminal Council of the then judge of the Basic Court, Maja Zeković.

In March 2008, the High Court confirmed this verdict.

After that, Vukotić became a business partner of Đukanović at UDG, while Vujović was elected as the Minister of Economy.

Harrison later appeared in the Panama Papers where he registered 13 companies linked to Montenegro.

Neoliberalism is especially disastrous for small countries

The neoliberal concept of economic development and the idea of ​​a global free market of goods, services and capital began to develop in the 70s of the 20th century during the time of American President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The beginning of the end of neoliberalism is linked to the financial crisis of 2008, when many countries of the world intervened and saved their banks. This was also done by the Government of Montenegro when it made a decision on state intervention in the First Bank.

In 2008, the well-known economist and Nobel laureate Józef Stiglic stated in a text entitled "The End of Neoliberalism" that neoliberal market fundamentalism has always been a political doctrine in the service of certain interests.

Political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote in one of his books that economic reforms in many countries did not bear fruit, and in some, due to the absence of a valid institutional framework, the situation only worsened after liberalization.

Yanis Varoufakis states in one of his articles on neoliberalism that neoliberalism seeks to govern all things while opposing democratic control over them.

”Demagogues advocate investment in human capital while mocking government-led social engineering. They welcome 'freedom' as a natural basis for life - provided they can use the heavy hand of the police to manage property relations and prevent democratic intervention in capitalism," says Varoufakis.

Vukotić was one of the key players when it comes to the management of state assets in Montenegro, after the fall of communism and the transition in which the privileged took away billions, while citizens and state enterprises were enormously impoverished.

Last decade, lost millions

Dejan Milovac reminds that for years Plantaže was considered a healthy company and thus it was significantly different from others that, after remaining in state ownership, continued to burden the state budget through subsidies and state aid, but the latest data showed to what extent such a situation was fake.

"The data also showed that little of what Vukotić officially advocated, even as a full professor at UDG, was actually applied in Plantaž's operations. Information from the investigation testifies to the wanton destruction of this state-owned company, wrong decisions that were to the detriment of the company's survival, and to the benefit of such business partners and the management itself, which unsparingly used the privileges of managing this company," Milovac said.

The key question that, as he says, arises in the case of Vukotić and others like him, is why decades had to pass and tens of millions of euros were lost before the competent authorities did something about the business of this company.

Capitalism for the majority, socialism for the minority

Dušan Pajović reminds that Montenegro and the former Yugoslavia used to have one of the most progressive methods of work, which is still studied at universities, i.e. the famous worker self-management or "one person - one share" program (one person - one share).

"Today we are just a number of multinational corporations, dubious 'domestic' businessmen, and corrupt and/or neoliberal trained politicians. What capitalism in action has shown many times is the fact that it is unsustainable and that it 'bursts' at some point. Under these circumstances, the market cannot self-regulate, because even when it successfully exploits workers, it cannot predict disasters like the Covid-19 virus," said Pajović.

Then, as he adds, state interventionism comes into play and a large influx of subsidies, against which those same recipients of money in a "more stable" time strongly protest.

"We live a version of capitalism for the majority and socialism for the minority... We were taught that fascism was defeated in 1945, but we saw that it was not quite so. Fascism was also used by the invocation of mythomania and extreme nationalism, in order to privatize factories, mines and industry for a pittance. You sell the mine for a mark, and the "difference in money" is taken by the politicians and today's "winners of the transition", i.e. war profiteers. I'm afraid that process is nowhere near over. Investors are welcomed and celebrated with open arms, while workers' rights are discussed exclusively from a populist prism that has no substance... We asked for changes, and we got replacements, and that in a package with religious fundamentalism", says Pajović, a member of the DiEM25 group that radically criticizes the existing dominant system and advocates for new relations in which the distribution of social wealth would be significantly fairer than that of illiberalism, or wild capitalism, one of whose ideologues in Montenegro, along with Milo Đukanović, was Veselin Vukotić.