I'm not ashamed, it's the right and statesmanlike move: Radulović says that shutting down "Crnogorska plovidba" was the only solution

Minister of Maritime Affairs Filip Radulović He reiterated that the sale of both ships of the state-owned shipping company Crnogorska plovidba Kotor (CP) and its practical closure was the right, statesmanlike and only possible move.

The ships “Kotor” and “Dvadeset prvi maj” were sold in September last year, following the Government’s consent given at the initiative of the Ministry of Maritime Affairs, under controversial circumstances to the Danish company “K/S Navision Group” for 13,2 million dollars, which is a third less than their market value. CP has had virtually no business activities since then, but still has an executive director, seven employees and five members of the Board of Directors, who receive salaries and allowances.

Since then, the Ministry of Maritime Affairs has not officially announced what they will do with the company without assets, which had only around three million euros left in its accounts at the end of last year after selling its ships.

Although the CP ships from the Ministry of Maritime Affairs were presented to the public before the sale as allegedly bad, neglected and of poor quality, "Kotor" and "Dvadeset prvi maj", under the new names "Atlantic North" and "Skyfall", they sail without any problems and earn money for their new owner from Denmark.

"I feel absolutely no shame or embarrassment, absolutely no. The Government, at my suggestion, has adopted the only statesmanlike solution to this problem," said Radulović, answering the question from "Vijesti" whether he feels responsibility and shame for the fact that the shipping company was literally destroyed under his leadership last year, and that this happened after both CP ships had been fully repaid to the Chinese creditor of their construction and were free to serve as collateral for a new loan that would help the company overcome its current insolvency and possibly expand its fleet.

Instead, the Ministry of Maritime Affairs decided to "save" CP by insisting on signing a controversial business cooperation agreement, unprecedented in maritime practice, with the company Barska plovidba, which is majority state-owned, which led to chaos in the management of CP's ships, a long-term stopover of "Kotor" in the USA and Great Britain, the accumulation of additional unnecessary costs, and the urgent sale of ships below market value.

“Unsustainable from the start”

Radulović reiterated that the sale of the ships and the practical closure of CP was the right move because, as he said, the company had ended almost every business year in the red since its founding, and that today it owes the state around 40 million euros in lost founding capital and loan installments that the Government, as a guarantor, paid to the Chinese creditor.

"It wasn't sustainable from the very beginning. Maybe if the company had four ships, and it hadn't been divided into two in Bar and two in Kotor. Maybe with good management, it would have been a sustainable solution. As it is, it wasn't sustainable. It was bad management from the very beginning. In addition, the CP Board of Directors, who held those positions in December 2024, put the final nail in the coffin, so to speak. They could have negotiated the lease of the ships at a higher price in time, but they didn't, and that was their mistake. They waited a few months, and then the market fell. From November, December to February, when they finally negotiated new leases, the market collapsed," said Radulović, blaming the Board of Directors, which has since been dismissed and headed by the captain of the long-haul vessel. Jov Lazarevic.

However, he did not say that at the time for which he accuses the management of not having contracted new time charters at higher prices, the CP ships were already on lease at prices that enabled them to make a profit, and that these contracts could not be terminated before the agreed deadline, which coincided with the fact that in the meantime there had been a drop in prices on the global ship space market and a drop in rents to a level that did not allow the shipowner to simply reproduce.

"They waited, waited, waited, for the market to recover, and the market did not recover. And they made the decision to rent those ships for $7.500 a day. The situation came to the point where the ship 'Kotor' was seized, or rather detained in Savannah. It was in such bad condition that the ship was detained for 20 days. They accumulated costs, I think 1,8 million euros, and that was the de facto end. The only rational statesmanlike solution at that moment, I am convinced that anyone in my shoes at that moment would have made that decision. That it was better to put it up for sale then and get something from it, than for the ships to be detained in some world ports and for the state to get zero. Something is better than zero."

When asked why he and his associates from the top of the Ministry of Justice, while selling the CP ships, misled the public about their allegedly poor condition, which could have affected the purchase price, by presenting photos of the ships that were at least a year and a half old and did not objectively show their condition, Radulović said that "those were absolutely current photos when we sent them in that statement, so there is no dilemma there."

Management in SPO

The Maritime Ministry has filed criminal charges with the Special State Prosecutor's Office against members of the former CP Board of Directors, accusing them of alleged incompetence, abuse and possible corruption when contracting regular five-year ship overhauls at a Turkish shipyard in 2022.

According to information from "Vijesti", members of the former Board of Directors and other long-standing members of CP's management gave statements to inspectors of the Special Police Department in Podgorica last week on this occasion.

State Secretary at the Ministry of Maritime Affairs Pavle Tripković points out that it was up to the CP management to manage and save the company.

"We left it to them, trusting them. It so happened that the company did not have any concrete proposals, or those proposals were so bad because we have a big limitation due to competition protection regulations. So, our hands were tied from doing anything for the state to help CP. We had court decisions and decisions of the Competition Protection Agency that prevent us from helping in a legal way," said Tripković.

Alluding to the controversial contract on business cooperation between CP and "Barska plovidba" that they insisted on, Tripković said that the Ministry of Maritime Affairs resorted to "some creative solutions that... are not prohibited, therefore they are allowed."

"They are not common in maritime practice, but I still think it was a good suggestion."

Although this arrangement led to chaos in ship management and the stoppage of the "Kotor" in the USA, Tripković said that it was "a centurion contract, but it was permitted and not prohibited by the Competition Protection Agency", and that it was "ultimately fulfilled", although "Barska Plovidba" unilaterally terminated it shortly after the ship stopped in Savannah.

He expressed suspicion that during that period there were "conspiratorial actions by CP people, given the sequence of events." He accused the former management of boarding CP ships, in violation of regulations, with seafarers from Ethiopia and Georgia, and of failing to promptly inform the Ministry about the blocking of the company's accounts by Prva Banka and the liquidity problems they caused in the timely settlement of obligations to crews and ship maintenance.

He called out the former management of CP for paying for the significantly more expensive overhaul and docking of its ships in 2022 in Turkey compared to how much "Barska plovidba" paid for these overhauls for its ships two years later, emphasizing that the overhaul was carried out "on the basis of a single bid, without any transparent public procurement procedure," and that they "could have collected at least three bids."

However, he did not state that a new ballast water treatment system was installed on CP ships during the overhaul, which significantly increases the cost of the operation, while this was not the case on Barska Plovidba ships, nor did he state that Barska ships were overhauled in the same shipyard as CP ships.

Tripković said that the Ministry of Maritime Affairs filed a criminal complaint against the former CP management on July 25 last year, that it was not acted upon for a long time, and that in the meantime the prosecutor handling the case had changed because the Ministry had sent urgent requests a few months ago.

"We also expect them to listen to us, to explain all this to them in much more detail. We were absolutely sure of our good intentions. Could we have done better? Probably not. But we did everything we could and in the end we saved what could be saved. Let the authorities investigate, that's it," Tripković said.

Tivat - Jaz Boulevard could be completed by the end of July, "if it gets tight"

Radulović, Tripković and the Director of the Directorate for Navigation Safety at the Ministry of Maritime Affairs, Captain Goran Idrizović, were guests of a forum organized by the PES Executive Board in Tivat the day before yesterday.

On that occasion, they answered questions from party supporters and citizens in the field of transport and maritime affairs: from measures to improve maritime safety in the Boka Bay, through stricter controls at sea, new legislation, yacht charters and the labor and legal status of seafarers, to road transport infrastructure.

Radulović, who also heads the Ministry of Transport as acting minister, said that he believes that the construction of the Tivat - Jaz boulevard can be fully completed by the end of July, "if it is pressed."

He announced that construction of the bypass around Budva will begin by the end of the year, and work on the construction of the second section of the highway from Mateševo ​​to Andrijevica will begin by the end of June.