Dali "passed" without a key document: New details on the legalization of an illegal hotel in Tivat

The Ministry of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property (MDUP), namely its Directorate for the Legalization of Illegal Structures, legalized the illegally built hotel of the Budva-based company "Gugi Commerc" in Opatovo near Tivat, without the request being accompanied by the legally required formal consent of the Directorate for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Montenegro (UZKD).

This was confirmed to "Vijesti" unofficially from the UZKD, with the note that the MDUP and its Legalization Administration were obliged, both under the Law on the Legalization of Illegal Objects and under the Law on the Protection of the Natural and Cultural-Historical Area of ​​Kotor, because the disputed object is located in the buffer zone of the UNESCO protected area of ​​natural and cultural heritage in Boka Kotorska, to obtain the opinion, or rather the consent, of the UZKD.

"Pursuant to Article 15 of the Law on the Legalization of Illegal Buildings, the administrative body, or the competent local government body, is obliged to send a summons to the applicant for legalization to submit, among other things, the consent of the state administrative body responsible for the protection of cultural property, for the legalization of a building built in a protected zone. The UZKD did not issue such consent when it comes to the building of the company "Gugi Commerce", so we will request that the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property officially declare this, and then we will involve the competent inspection," a source from the UZKD told "Vijesti".

On March 16, the Directorate for the Legalization of Illegal Structures, which is a body of the Ministry of Interior, legalized another large illegally constructed structure in the buffer zone of the UNESCO area in Boka Bay - a new hotel by the company "Gugi Commerce" from Budva in the Opatovo settlement.

Department headed by the minister Slaven Radunović (New Serbian Democracy) did this despite the fact that the Tivat police filed a criminal complaint against the Budva businessman on February 19, 2024. Branislav Savić Gugi and his company "Gugi Commerce" for illegal construction in the village of Opatovo in the cadastral municipality of Donja Lastva in Tivat. The prosecution has been conducting an investigation into this case for more than two years, which has "walked" from the Basic State Prosecutor's Office in Kotor to the Basic State Prosecutor's Office in Bar, which is now acting in this case, on the orders of the Higher State Prosecutor's Office in Podgorica, which delegated this case to it due to the alleged overload of Kotor prosecutors.

Savić's company in Opatovo, instead of the hotel facility with a total area of ​​1.025 square meters, with a floor area of ​​1,200 square meters, and a ground floor + 2 floors, which was announced in the plan and the construction application from 2021, and for which the consent of the chief state architect was obtained, built a facility with dimensions of 1P + P + 5k, with a total net area of ​​as much as 3.149 square meters. In addition, in the past more than two years since the criminal complaint was filed for construction beyond the approved dimensions, the Budva businessman and his company have persistently ignored the law and repeatedly violated the orders of the inspection, which issued "Guga Commerc" orders to stop work and sealed the construction site. However, although these actions by Savić and his company have the characteristics of multiple criminal offenses, the police did not prevent them, and the prosecutor's office has not yet completed the investigation into the criminal complaint from February 2024.

Instead of being prevented from violating the law and sanctioned, a Budva businessman close to the Democratic People's Party has in the meantime been essentially rewarded by the department headed by Radunović, whose New Serbian Democracy is in the "For the Future of Montenegro" coalition with the DNP.

The Legalization Administration accepted Savić's request and legalized the building for which the police filed a criminal complaint against him for illegal construction two years ago.

It is interesting that the Administration for the Legalization of Illegal Buildings conducted this procedure according to the so-called abbreviated administrative procedure, so everything was completed in less than a month - from February 17 to March 16 of this year, when the Acting Director of the Administration Radmila Lainović issued a decision approving the "legalization of part of an illegal building owned by the company "Gugi Commerc" Budva, with a net area of ​​2.274,78 square meters" in Opatovo.

Amendments to the Law on the Protection of the Natural and Cultural-Historical Area of ​​Kotor, which the Montenegrin Parliament adopted under an urgent procedure in order to prevent Kotor from being transferred to UNESCO's "List of Endangered World Heritage Sites", entered into force on March 28. From that day on, local and state authorities had to suspend all previously submitted and still unresolved requests for the legalization of illegal structures, both in the UNESCO protected area of ​​the Bay of Kotor and in its so-called buffer zone, which includes part of the area of ​​the municipality of Tivat where Savić built a structure three times larger than permitted.

In Savić's effort to legalize the building on Opatovo in a short period of time before the changes to the law come into force, the Budva businessman was helped, according to what is written in the legalization decision, not only by the Legalization Administration, which conducted a "shortened administrative procedure", but also by other authorities: the otherwise proverbially very slow Regional Unit of the Real Estate Administration of Montenegro in Tivat already issued a decision on February 9th on the verification of the detailed works and floor plan of Savić's illegal building, which was prepared on January 24th by the company "Azimut Geo" from Budva, on March 5th the Regional Water Supply Company of the Montenegrin Coast from Budva, and on March 6th the Municipality of Tivat issued "Guga Commerc" certificates "on regulating relations with regard to the payment of a special fee for investments in accordance with the law regulating the regional water supply of the Montenegrin Coast", and the Municipality of Tivat issued "evidence of regulating relations regarding the payment of urban rehabilitation fees”, which he then submitted to the Administration for the Legalization of Illegal Buildings.

However, in the documentation referred to in the legalization decision by the Director of the Legalization Administration Radmila Lainović, there is no legally binding consent from the UZKD, which is why the UZKD is now requesting an official statement from the Ministry of Interior and announcing the engagement of an inspection.