The Public Company for Coastal Zone Management has officially requested the Police Directorate - Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) to investigate the origin of the money of the bidders who responded to the tender of this state-owned company and who offered millions of dollars to the state for the lease of beaches.
This information was confirmed to "Vijesti" by sources familiar with this tender procedure.
"The initiative was submitted based on the Tender Commission's assessments, and for each individual case who offered a million-dollar amount. This was done in accordance with the Law on the Prevention of Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism (Articles 18, 19 and 20). Inspectors were requested to carry out an inspection due to unrealistic offers and suspicions that the aim was money laundering or some other related criminal offense," said a source for "Vijesti".
The Coastal District told the newspaper yesterday that they would not evaluate offers worth millions if they turned out to be part of a deliberate game by old beach tenants, in order to regain valuable parts of the coast through phantom bidders.
Yesterday, the company called on the Special State Prosecutor's Office (SDT) to get involved in this case and investigate the multi-million-euro beach lease offers.
"Vijesti" is awaiting responses from the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property regarding this case.
The opening of bids for the lease of beaches in Bar and Ulcinj took place yesterday, and as "Vijesti" has learned, millions of dollars were offered there for certain beaches.
Bids for beaches in Budva (89 beaches) were opened the day before yesterday and for only one location, as "Vijesti" has learned, there were no bids. Bids of one million euros were submitted for the lease of the popular Petrovac beaches "Lučice" and "Ponda", and for certain parts of the Petrovac city beach of 800.000 and 950.000 euros.
"Although the tender procedure has been going smoothly so far, we have noticed that bids with extremely high amounts were submitted at certain locations in the municipality of Budva, which has attracted particular media attention. Given that we suspect that these bids are not the result of rational business decisions, we call on the SDT to get involved in checking whether these bids are the product of a desire to launder money or deliberately make the tender procedure meaningless, or are they really the product of a rational business decision. We will make a decision on further action in cooperation with the relevant Ministry and the Government in order to preserve the integrity and legality of the entire procedure," they pointed out in Morski dobro.
Bidders with astronomical offers, as explained to "Vijesti", will be invited to prove the origin of the money, but also to prove their real intention to rent the beach at that price, because otherwise, the offer will be automatically rejected and will not enter the evaluation system, so as not to repeat the situation from almost a decade ago.
The "Vijesti" source states that three cities - Ulcinj, Bar and Budva - brought Morski dobr in 2019 77 percent of the revenue from bathing areas, so with the opening of these offers, most of the work has been completed.
Case from 2016
When Morsko dobro announced a tender for the lease of Budva's beaches in March 2016, "Vijesti" announced that the lease of the left and right parts of Kamenovo beach in Podgoričanin was Vaso Dedivanović offered an incredible 600 thousand euros per section, a total of 1,2 million for the entire Budva beach.
It was immediately clear that it was just a game and that Dedivanović, with his astronomical offer, enabled the old tenants to regain the beach with the minimum offered price. After the Public Enterprise Evaluation Commission ranked the offers, Dedivanović's was ranked first, and the former tenants who offered, just, slightly more than the initial minimum price, thanks to references, from the Blue Flag to the fact that they had "successfully" managed the beach, overtook the other participants and achieved second position.
Dedivanović then gave up, and the beach went to the old tenants. Morsko dobro argued that it had acted according to the law and conducted a tender procedure, and that it had collected a guarantee of ten thousand euros from Dedivanović. Although the SDT, headed by Milivoje Katnic, apart from the media dust-up that was raised by the publication of incredible offers, no one was ever prosecuted and the case was forgotten.
However, the opening of bids the day before yesterday for the lease of 89 Budva beaches reopened the story of the participation of phantom players and the possibility of obtaining a four-year lease through similar tender intrigues, outsmarting the Coastal State.
Two Petrovac beaches, "Ponta" and "Lučice", were under scrutiny. Namely, for the popular 39-meter-long "Ponta" beach, the minimum lease price was 20.957 euros, for which three offers were received: "Žuti zec", 89.002 euros, "Neimar investment construction" at least one million euros, while the previous tenant "Ponta Petrovac" offered 30.000 euros.
Calculation
For the lease of the "Lučice" beach, which is 215 meters long and has a minimum seasonal lease price of 44.570 euros, four offers were received: the Podgorica company "Profast", 200.002 euros, "Life Style Development" from Tivat 153.200 euros, "Pešter Co" 45.000, while SP offered one million euros.
A source from "Vijesti" explained that if Morsko dobro were to evaluate offers in the millions, the previous tenants, who offered the lowest amounts, would be ranked second.
"With some abandoning the million-euro bid, because it is economically unprofitable for someone to pay 1,2 million euros per year for beach rent, including VAT, to be able to operate profitably, the current tenants will once again have the opportunity to manage these beaches for the next four summers. If the million-euro bids are evaluated, the scoring will be done as follows - the bid with the highest offered rent will receive the maximum number of points for this criterion, and the other bids will receive a proportional number of points according to the formula: A= (A1/Amax) x 75, where: A - the number of points awarded to the bidder based on the offered price criterion A1 - the offered fee by the bidder whose bid is being evaluated and Amax - the maximum fee offered in the tender for the location in question," the source of "Vijesti" states.
As he explained in the example of the lease of the beach "Lučice" near Petrovac, which is 215 meters long and the minimum seasonal lease price is 44.570 euros, the first-ranked offer would be the offer of SP, which offered one million euros - Amax, and it would have 75 points, "Profast", whose offer was 200.002 euros, would have 15 points, "Life style", with a bid of 153.200 euros, would receive 11,49 points, while "Pešter", which offered the least, has 4,5 points for the price and another 12,5 points for references (if it has owned the beach for five years) plus another 12,5 points if it has had the Blue Flag the entire time.
"In this way, the lowest bid, in terms of price and without the Blue Flag, would have as many as 17 points and would be ranked second. If the first-place bidder withdraws, Morsko dobro would collect a guarantee of 45 thousand euros, but this means that the current tenant, who would rent the beach again, would have an additional cost of some 11 thousand euros per year," the source of "Vijesti" stated.
As "Vijesti" was told, the tender participants pointed all this out to the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property yesterday and appealed that the multi-million bids should not be allowed to be evaluated, because as they stated, it was obviously an agreement between the old tenants and the tender participant.
The state could suffer damage worth tens of millions of euros.
Participants in the tender for the lease of the beaches "Ponta" and "Lučice", the companies "Žuti zec" and "Profast", told "Vijesti" that if the speculation comes true and the bids are evaluated, the state will be damaged by tens of millions of euros.
"Regarding the speculations circulating by interested parties regarding the current tender for the lease of beaches in Petrovac, and concerning the ranking of future tenants, in terms of the scoring method implemented by Morsko dobro, as one of the bidders for the beaches 'Lučice' and 'Ponta', we can only announce that we believe in the democratic principle and laws of this country. Namely, the attitude of the old tenants towards the beaches as if they were their personal property and that for years this right belonged only to them, clearly tells us that they are ready for various malfeasances and calculations in order not to be left without the lease of the beaches and the income that they have been generating through them for years," said the companies.
They further pointed out that since it is not their personal property and since each lease is time-limited, noting that tenders serve to ensure that the right to lease is granted to those who offer the highest bid, or that after five years, the one with the best bid wins, "it leaves us no room to not believe that legal regulations will finally be respected and that the ranking will be carried out in accordance with the rules of the public invitation."
"We are not prejudging, but rather waiting for a decision, and we leave speculation to those who are unable to accept that the beaches are not their ancestral property, but we are only pointing out that if the aforementioned speculation comes true, that is, if the old tenants lease the aforementioned beaches for minimal offers, both the state and the citizens in all coastal municipalities will be damaged by tens of millions of euros, and we will protect our rights," the statement of the two companies submitted to "Vijesti" states.
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