President of the Municipality of Tivat Željko Komnenović announced that the local administration will continue to take all measures to protect the property and economic interests of the city when it comes to the further status and functioning of Tivat Airport.
Komnenović confirmed to the "News" that despite the final verdict of the Administrative Court, which accepted the Municipality's appeal, the recent Administration for Cadastre and State Property (UKDI) did not act on it, but again acted on the Government's request to transfer several hundred thousand square meters of municipal property to the state. land in the Tivat airport complex and in its immediate contact zone. In another identical case, the decision of the Administrative Court is still awaited, while in two other cases, the decision of the second-instance body - the Ministry of Finance - is awaited.
In all these four cases, a total of about 700.000 square meters of municipal property, which was transferred from the local government to the state five years ago, is being worked on.
Damage above 70 million
"The regional unit of UKDI in Tivat made exactly the same decision as it was made for the first time in 2018. At that time, the government, obviously wanting a quick concession of the Tivat airport, transferred the property of the Municipality of Tivat to the state in a formally and legally illegal way in the cadastre. The group that was in power in the Municipality of Tivat at the time complained about this to the judicial authorities, and four procedures have been carried out so far. I am with the then Minister of Finance Aleksandar Damjanović who is responsible for the work of the UKDI, insisted that the court decisions made in our favor so far be implemented. "Unfortunately, the Tivat cadastre has long since gone beyond any legal norms and normal behavior of a state body towards citizens, it again makes the same decision as the one from 2018, even though the court ordered it to do something that, in my humble opinion, is diametrically opposed," he said. is Komnenović.
Prime Minister's Government Duško Marković in 2018, transferring Tivat to the state as the owner of real estate owned by the local self-government in and around the Tivat airport complex caused direct damage of over 70 million euros.
According to the documentation of the former Directorate for Real Estate of Montenegro, about 45 percent of the total area of about one million square meters of the Tivat airport with a protective belt was owned by the Municipality of Tivat, in exclusive ownership or co-ownership with private persons (citizens). Meanwhile, all this is at the request of the then Minister of Transport Osman Nurković (BS) by administrative means, from the Municipality copied to the state, which only referred to the Law on State Property, but never paid the Municipality any compensation for the property that was taken from it. Bearing in mind the assessments of court experts in the lawsuits that citizens are still conducting for the return or compensation for their property at the airport, which amount to 109 euros per square meter, it turns out that the state took property from the Municipality of Tivat worth at least 50 million euros.
Marković's government, preparing for the concession of ACG (which it failed to achieve by the end of its mandate) in 2019, without following the procedure provided for by law, transferred to the state from the Municipality of Tivat the right to dispose of another 225 square meters of land plots in the immediate vicinity. of the current airport complex. Those properties are worth at least another twenty million euros. The local government previously leased part of this property to the Airports of Montenegro and collected significant income from it. Although he was bound by the Government's conclusion and Article 35 of the Law on State Property, Nurković never made a formal request to the Municipality of Tivat that the local administration transfer to the Government its right to dispose of immovable properties that the Government assessed as necessary "for the realization of the state's interest" (the provision of the airport in the concession). If that had been done, the Municipality would have been obliged, according to that article of the law, to return those immovable properties "at the request of the Government to the disposal of Montenegro". However, this was never requested from the Municipality, but Nurković did it with the help of the Ministry of Finance, which he led at the time Darko Radunović, and under whose jurisdiction was the Real Estate Administration of Montenegro since then Dragan Kovačević at the head, managed to transfer those several hundred thousand square meters of municipal real estate at and around the airport to the state as the sole owner and holder of the right of disposal, despite the failure to comply with the legal procedure.
The question of the concession "in the next 10 months"
Mayor Komnenović pointed out that the Municipality once again complained about the actions of the UKDI until recently, and that in the meantime he had talks with the Prime Minister Milojko Spajić and the Minister of Maritime Affairs and Transport Filip Radulović who informed him that the issue of whether the Tivat airport will remain under state management or go into a concession will be resolved in the next 10 months.
At the annual meeting of the Chamber of Commerce, Spajić announced the decision on the concession for ACG by the end of last year, which did not happen. A few days after that, towards the end of 2023, Radulović stated that the procedure regarding the concession will be completed during the summer months of 2024.
"What is certain and what is clear is the position of the Municipality of Tivat and the political position of the "People Wins" group that I lead and our narrow and wider coalition, is that the city of Tivat must definitely have its own interest in this," said Komnenović, not wanting to it goes into detail about how that interest will be protected.
He believes that "definitely, during the management of the airport in Tivat so far by ACG Tivat, there was no or minimal benefit from it".
"In contrast to that, in the previous period when the airport was managed by JAT, Tivat had clear material and various other types of benefits. We want the Tivat airport to return to that level of business, that in the management and exploitation of the airport we have a partnership relationship and concrete benefits for the citizens of Tivat - both in terms of property and in the economic sense", underlined the mayor. According to the unofficial information of "Vijesti", the current government of Prime Minister Spajić plans to hand over the Tivat airport to a concessionaire, and for the state, despite the legal solutions that guarantee 70 percent of the revenue to the local government, to keep all the money received from the concession for itself and direct it to the construction of the future fast coastal roads on the Montenegrin coast. The government's intention is to avoid the obligation to transfer to the Municipality of Tivat 70 percent of the revenue from the concession of the Tivat airport, which is guaranteed to the local government by the current Law on Concessions, by a kind of real gymnastics, referring to the fact that the entire complex of the Tivat airport is in the zone of marine property, so that the Public Enterprise for the management of the maritime property, that is, the state, all the money from the release of the airport should belong to the concessionaire.
Prosecutor's office without reaction to the seizure of property
The prosecutor's office, which a few years ago arrested the former director of the Real Estate Administration, Dragan Kovačević, on the suspicion that he had, in a similar way, unfoundedly transferred from the state to private individuals much smaller land complexes of drastically less value than those of the Municipality of Tivat in and around the airport for years, as the non-official says. the source of "Vijesti", silently observes this "real robbery of Tivat by the former Government, and the damage caused to the local administration, which exceeds the sum of 70 million euros".
"The change of ownership rights and disposition of these properties in the cadastral records was carried out regardless of the fact that the state did not give the Municipality any compensation for the expropriated properties. The change was made administratively, despite the facts that every freshman at the Faculty of Law knows - that the Municipality and the state are not the same legal entities, i.e. that the Municipality of Tivat, and not the then SR Montenegro, or the state of the SFRY, was the buyer, recipient or beneficiary of the expropriation when was the local government of the 50s and 60s of the last century, legally acquired that land from its previous private owners, all with the intention of building an airport here", said the source of "Vijesti".
He adds that the Constitution also stipulates that "no one can be deprived or limited of the right to property, except when the public interest requires it, with fair compensation".
"The Municipality of Tivat never received that compensation from the state for the practically stolen 70 million euros of real estate in and around the local airport," the source of "Vijesti" pointed out.
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