Scheduling an extraordinary session of the Parliament of Montenegro in the middle of August, in fact, aims to adopt two important laws for the future of the country out of private, not public interest, due to political calculations in the run-up to local elections, Professor Branko Radulović said.
Proof of this, he says, is the Draft Law on the Development Bank, which does not prescribe a future financial institution of the greatest public interest, but an instrument of the Government, i.e. Prime Minister Milojko Spajić, "to place financial resources according to personal interests in an extremely non-transparent manner".
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"I emphasize with regret that Spajić's statement at the session dedicated to the Prime Minister's Hour that even as a Japanese student for more than a decade he listened to unsuccessful announcements about the establishment of the Development Bank and that he is the one who will finally realize it, is another in a series of his falsehoods. Obstruction to the establishment of the Development Bank belongs both to him personally and to DPS," Radulović stated in the announcement.
He reminds that in several convocations of the Assembly, for more than ten years, he processed the Bill on the Montenegrin Development Bank with his colleagues or personally. He also proposed it during the 42nd Government, on December 25, 2020, so that the Government, at its session in January 2021, would adopt the proposal of the negative opinion of the Ministry of Finance and Social Welfare, headed by Milojko Spajić, the current great proponent. Development banks.
The Draft Law on the Development Bank of Montenegro was formally processed by the deputies of the Europe Now Movement (PES), in order to avoid, says Radulović, a public discussion about a very important institution.
"After all, they have already shown that they do not have the reform capacity, competence or autonomy to do it themselves. It is certain that the authorship of each segment of the Proposal is neither Spajić's nor his faithful minister (Novice) Vuković's. On one hybrid, inconsistent and heterogeneous text, Spajić's authorship is only in the part that this new and very important state financial institution will be his new 'money machine', said Radulović.
He believes that of the many controversial provisions and solutions of the Proposal, the most controversial are Chapters IX - Development Bank Authorities and X - Financing and Publicity of the Development Bank's Work.
It was proposed that the bank's bodies should be the Assembly, the Supervisory Board and the Management Board. The Assembly of the bank would consist of the Government of Montenegro, although this is not clearly prescribed by the Bill, Radulović states.
"However, bearing in mind the closeness of this parliamentary majority to Miodrag Dodik, analogous to his decision in the Investment and Development Bank of the Republic of Srpska, it is to be expected that these will be members of the Government of Montenegro. In this way, the Government would exercise full control over the decision-making and selection of other bodies of the bank. The practice in advanced countries is that the Bank Assembly does not exist at all. According to the Proposal, the Supervisory Board is elected by the Bank's Assembly. The practice is that the supervisory board, for reasons of transparency and competence, consists of competent ministers, members of parliament, including those from the opposition, and heads of business and scientific institutions. Furthermore, according to the Proposal, the Supervisory Board elected in this way by the controlled Assembly of the bank would elect and control the Management Board," he said.
According to him, in the Proposed Decision for Chapters VIII - Accounting and Auditing of Financial Statements, X - Financing and Publicity of the Development Bank's Work and XI - Reporting and Control of the Development Bank's Operations "are profoundly anti-European, monopolistic and extremely non-transparent". The audit of the financial work according to the Proposal is carried out by the selected Audit Company, which is chosen by the bank's bodies controlled in this way, whose opinion is submitted to the Central Bank.
"Chapter X supposedly stipulates that the work of the Development Bank is public, however, this publicness is reflected only in the submission to the Government, for the purpose of familiarization, of the Work Report and the Annual Financial Statement, with the auditor's opinion. Allegedly, the conditions for using the Development Bank's funds are published on the bank's website. However, all this is negated in the next paragraph, an already known practice - that information, data and documentation related to the operations of Razvojna banka are considered business secrets", pointed out Radulović.
In chapter XI, as he added, it was proposed that the Development Bank is obliged to submit certain reports to the Central Bank of Montenegro, and that the Central Bank controls the operations of the Development Bank in certain segments and that it submits a report on this to the Development Bank with recommended measures, which are , as until now according to commercial banks, "were only warning or targeted".
"In advanced countries, the financial report and audit of operations, according to very rigid rules, are carried out by the internal and external auditor, the central bank, the agency authorized for auditing and the ministry of finance, and all this is submitted to the government and the state parliament, or only to the state parliament".
A large number of the provisions of the Proposal are, Radulović says, also very problematic, whether they are solutions or re-normation.
"Obviously, for the author of this proposal, this is the first legal act that he created or had the intention of obscuring the essence with this text. What else should we expect from the Spajić-Vuković duo when they put us in debt like that without respecting the timing, the amount or the model, which was pointed out by the leading financial institutions even then, even my little one. I guess the time will come for them to bear criminal responsibility for that".
Radulović believes that it would be most useful if a coherent, systemically integrated draft law on the development bank was drafted by an expert from Croatia or Slovenia and "teach these incompetent experts how to issue national bonds and treasury bills and save hundreds of millions of euros on interest."
"We can freely call this proposal 'Milojko Spajić's bank' or 'Milojko Spajić's crypto machine' or 'the Montenegrin bank of the Trebinjska group'," said Radulović.
As he stated, when it comes to the Law on the Use of Energy from Renewable Sources, which should be adopted in an abbreviated form, with great delay, the last one in the Balkans, it had to be in agreement with new and high-quality national and strategic documents, that pass a full, not ad hoc, public debate, and to reach an optimal expert and political consensus, in order to stop the existing shortage of energy potentials and to carry out an efficient green transition, achieve full diversification and prepare the country for future, increasingly challenging times.
“None of that. We have been warned in vain in the reports of the European Commission on several occasions. We don't even have a high-quality Spatial Plan of Montenegro, and we won't have one, all odds are, soon. The energy development strategy is pre-transitional and outdated. Nothing even from the National Climate and Energy Plan," warns Radulović.
"Uncles and godfathers" grabbed most of the solar and wind potential
In the meantime, as he says, "retrained" DPS tycoons and various "uncles and godfathers" have seized most of the solar and wind potential in Montenegro under the most favorable conditions.
"Great damage to the state has already been done, 3 billion euros, and more than one billion is damage to the local self-government. Minister (Saša) Mujović, you don't need to travel too far, go to neighboring Albania and see what they have done with two large solar fields and a new wind park, you can also go to Serbia to see how the partner that should offer the best project is chosen at the auction , credit financing, construction and trial operation of reversible hydropower plants and other renewable sources, and that it later remains owned by the state. You can also go to Slovenia, to see how local self-government is self-aware and how much it gains from the construction of renewable energy sources. You can see in the region how new technologies are introduced, green hydrogen and how electricity is stored. Or how many city biomass power plants have already been built," says Radulović.
He reminds that in Montenegro there is nothing even about a solution for cascading hydropower plants on the Piva and possibly Morača watercourses, and Dodik is "joking" with Montenegro about its waters in Lake Bilećka and giving some crumbs.
"Where's your pride? There will come a time, already in a couple of decades, when we will not have water for the production of hydropower, and later not even for biological needs. Investing in the ecological reconstruction of the Pljevlja Thermal Power Plant is just a waste of money, due to high cross-border quotas for CO2 and the cost of production, which will be several times higher than the cost of energy obtained from solar fields and wind generators and reversible hydroelectric plants. And then comes the shutdown of the Coal Mine. In vain, I sought environmental expertise and prosecuted criminal charges against those responsible in DPS. The 'liberators' turned out to be worse than their predecessors in many respects".
Radulović says that the abbreviated version of the Bill on the use of energy from renewable energy sources in these conditions, with many undefined norms, the possibility of incentives and status for privileged producers, regardless of the EBRD's help, which obviously did not take into account the context and character of this majority, will only be an instrument for corruption and controlled expensive investments.
"We are facing a continuous and marked increase in electricity prices and thus all living costs. The 'scorched earth' effect - there is no real economy, a huge shortage of food, citizens have a deficit of electricity and the tycoons have a surplus, so they export it, or they blackmail us".
It indicates that the Development Bank and the Institute for Development are the umbrella institutions of every advanced country and function in conjunction in order to achieve long-term sustainable development and overcome all crises.
"I also advocated for the Development Institute for more than a decade, but they were deaf to that as well. Finally, the 43rd Government accepted my initiative and in the budget for 2023 allocated funds for the establishment of that institution in the amount of 3 million euros, even the location was foreseen, that it would be part of the building of the Science and Technology Park, but unfortunately nothing happened. Spajić himself founded his 'paf-paf institute' and with his companions is destroying the perspective of the remaining resources".
Radulović also addressed the President of the Assembly, Andrija Mandić, a "former student and comrade", and asked him what he was doing.
"He trampled on everything that we as DF advocated and fought for in order to remove a corrupt and criminal regime. Today, he treads daily on our superior program and our solutions, which he himself stood behind. Let him read again our program, our legislative proposals, resolutions, among them the Law on the Development Bank, numerous proposals for the revitalization of the energy sector. Everything seems to have been a lie and a scam. Or human weaknesses and urges are the most important. But all this will pass, only traces of our actions towards our country will remain".
Radulović tells Mandić that the last moment is "to get out of this unnatural, anti-state 'embrace' and do the only right thing, which is to adopt the reformed electoral legislation with open lists and initiate early general elections".
"Otherwise, Montenegro will not go bankrupt because we are eating our future and the future of our descendants. Without sustainable development, competitive production and new value, there is nothing but 'fog work'. Finally, in the middle of this century, our biological survival will be called into question. However, I believe in his reason and that this is not his goal," concluded Radulović.
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