Radulović misled the public regarding the restructuring plan: Out of six scenarios, they chose the closure of Crnogorska plovidba

Minister of Maritime Affairs Filip Radulović misled the public by claiming that the Government and the Ministry of Maritime Affairs are not currently considering closing down "Crnogorska plovidba" (CP), because the "Restructuring Plan for Shipping Companies of Montenegro", which was prepared for the needs of this department by the company "Računovođa", shows that a scenario of closing down this state-owned maritime company is at work.

In addition, the Government yesterday approved Radulović's request to sell both CP ships - "Kotor" and "Dvadesetprvi maj".

Asked to comment on the allegations about the closure of CP from the "Plan for the Restructuring of Shipping Companies of Montenegro", which "Vijesti" wrote about this week, Radulović told reporters in Bar two days ago that there are several potential solutions in that document.

"The analysis was done by the Institute of Certified Public Accountants and included one solution to potentially close one of the companies, one solution to close both companies, and a third solution to close neither company. There are a myriad of potential solutions, now we need to see what is legally and financially possible for us to implement," he said.

Radulović stressed that the analysis had several other solutions, "but someone only pulled out one solution and announced it to the public," which he considered tendentious, because the document, according to him, contained five solutions. He added that as soon as the executive branch decides on one of these solutions, it will inform the public.

However, the minister denies the content of the Plan he refers to, as well as what the Ministry of Maritime Affairs has already undertaken to "save CP", as they publicly called the signing of the contract on business and technical cooperation between Crnogorska and Barska plovidba (BP), on which Radulovć's department insisted, despite warnings from the recent management of CP and part of the professional public that this is an illegal and harmful contract for CP.

The company “Accountant” made the plan, not the Institute

The restructuring plan, which was prepared for the Ministry of Maritime Affairs by the company "Računovođa" and not by the Institute of Certified Accountants of Montenegro, as announced by the minister, and which "Vijesti" has exclusive access to, foresees the signing of a business and technical cooperation agreement, such as that concluded between the two shipping companies at the end of May, exclusively for the implementation of a scenario called "Programmed shutdown of Crnogorska plovidba". Only this scenario has been worked out in detail, and its key provisions are, as "Vijesti" has already published, "the conclusion of a contract on business and technical cooperation between Crnogorska and Barska plovidba under the following conditions: BP takes on lease and management of two ships owned by CP, which are currently leased and employed until September 2025, with the amount of the lease determined under market conditions, in exchange for the taken-over ships BP would pay CP the missing funds in the amount of about one million euros in advance for the payment of future ship leases in order to repay the overdraft loan to Prva Banka, pay salaries and other necessary operating costs related to the ships (costs of fuel, oil, spare parts, consumables related to the ships); after collecting the first lease payments from the issuance of the ships, BP would refund the advance paid..." The authors of the "Restructuring Plan", completed at the end of March this year when it was submitted to the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and the executive directors of CP Vladimir Tadić and BP Boris Mihailović, they specifically pointed out that "this contract could be concluded within 20 days" and that "this type of contractual arrangement, as doubly binding, does not require prior approval by the Competition Protection Agency."

This is exactly what happened in the meantime, and the implementation of the scenario called "Programmed Shutdown of Crnogorska Plovidba" began in practice, with the ultimate goal, as the authors of the Plan wrote, of transferring two of its merchant ships "Kotor" and "Dvadeset prvi maj" that are not burdened with loans to BP, thereby facilitating that company's market position and increasing Barska's ability to repay loan installments to the Chinese for its two ships "Bar" and "Budva", which the company is burdened with until 2034.

There is no shutdown of Barska plovidba

Although Radulović told reporters in Bar that the Plan "has a myriad of potential solutions", one of which, according to him, is "to close both companies", this does not correspond to the truth, because in the "Plan for the Restructuring of Shipping Companies of Montenegro", which Radulović kept secret, there is not a single scenario that implies the closure of BP.

The authors of the Plan offered six scenarios: a variant in which both CP and BP continue to operate independently and independently of each other in the same organizational and operational form as before, the variant "Integration of capacities through reallocation of resources", which through three sub-variants implies the leasing of two Crnogorska ships by BP and their further use and credit burdening by BP for the purpose of further developing its fleet of cargo ships, i.e. the purchase of ferries for the Bar-Bari line, and the scenario called "Additional considerations" which has two sub-variants - "Programmed closure of Crnogorska plovidba", i.e. "Collection of state debt and accelerated closure of Crnogorska plovidba". In none of these variants that imply any form of cooperation with Barska, CP has a bright future, because each of them foresees either its complete shutdown and liquidation through bankruptcy, or at best, "vegetation" on paper in the form of a company without ships with a minimum of employees, which should survive on only 50.000 - 60.000 dollars per month, which BP, according to the authors of the Plan, should pay Crnogorska monthly for the so-called "bare boat charter" of its two ships.

Each proposed scenario of cooperation between CP and BP has as its goal and final effect, according to the authors of the Plan, either “long-term stabilization and better positioning of BP in the market” or “expansion of BP” by purchasing additional vessels on credit, the means of borrowing and securing which would be two CP vessels. The Ministry of Maritime Affairs is doing all this, even though CP is 100 percent state-owned, while this is not the case with Barska, where the state owns 55 percent of the capital, and the rest of the company belongs to various private minority shareholders. The only scenario from the Plan that implies signing a “contract on business and technical cooperation”, such as the one already concluded between the two companies under pressure from the Ministry of Maritime Affairs, is “We are programming the closure of Crnogorska plobvidba”. In the continuation of the implementation of this scenario, the authors of the Plan predicted that it would lead to a situation in which the Government should carry out “the purchase of shares of minority shareholders of Barska until the acquisition of a two-thirds majority of the state capital in the company”. This means that Radulović is already implementing a scenario of consciously destroying 100 percent of CP, transferring the management of its two ships to Barska, a company in which the state has just over half of the ownership, and ultimately buying out the shares of Barska's minority shareholders by the state, which would "pour" millions of euros of state money into the pockets of those shareholders.

Payment of minority shareholders as in railway companies

Radulović had already implemented this scenario of paying off minority shareholders last year when he was at the head of the then unified Ministry of Transport and Maritime Affairs, for example by merging two previously separate railway companies into one: Railway Transport of Montenegro (ŽPCG) and Maintenance of Railway Rolling Stock (OŽVS). At the time, at the proposal of Radulović's department, the government purchased the shares of the minority shareholders of these two railway companies at a price of 1,7 euros (ŽP) and 2,1 euros (OŽVS). The last price of ŽP shares on the Montenegro Stock Exchange, at which they were sold before this move by Radulović and the government, was 38 cents, while in the same period, OŽVS shares were sold for 1,45 euros.

This scenario has put a total of just over 1,5 million euros of state money into the pockets of minority shareholders of two railway companies, but the investigative authorities, at least publicly, have so far shown no intention of investigating this transaction, which is now being attempted in a similar pattern, but with significantly higher values, in the case of two maritime companies in which the state is the sole or majority owner.