The Special State Prosecutor's Office is investigating potential embezzlement related to the property of the Municipality of Tivat used by the Arsenal Football Club, as well as the way in which the club operated with the money of the local administration of Tivat, during the period when Arsenal was headed by the former vice-president of the Municipality and the mayor of Tivat, Siniša Kusovac. (DPS) and Tivat businessman Rado Gago Arsić, who is close to that party.
This was answered by "Vijesti" from SDT when asked if and what they have done so far regarding the media announcements about the findings of the internal audit of the Municipality that checked the operations of FC Arsenal for 2018-2020. year, and in connection with the possible illegal disposal of the property of the Municipality by the management of the football club, the possible conclusion of harmful contracts on the issuance of that municipal property with a third party, and in connection with the possible illegal financing of the club from the budget of the Municipality, beyond the provisions for that purpose, in the budget decision, funds.
"I inform you that case files have been created in the Special State Prosecutor's Office, and in relation to the event you mention - the findings of the internal review of the Municipality of Tivat in connection with the operations of FC Arsenal. In this case, the collection of the necessary information requested from the Police Administration and the Special Police department," SDT spokeswoman, special prosecutor Sanja Jovićević told "Vijesta".
The internal audit stated earlier that adequate controls were not established in the management system of FC Arsenal, as well as in the procedure of distribution of funds for sports carried out by the former administration of the dismissed mayor of Kusovac. In November, the internal audit reviewed Arsenal's financial books, as well as the archive of the then Secretariat for Youth, Sports and Social Affairs, which was headed by Darka Ognjanović (DPS).
There was a change in the head of FC Arsenal recently, as Krsto Bošković (SDP), former vice-president of the municipality and former president of the Tivat parliament, sat in the chair of the president of the Board of Directors. Bošković replaced businessman Rad Arsić in that position, who recently resigned from the position of President of the Supervisory Board, which Arsić had held since October 2018.
The business of FC Arsenal and how the administration of Kusovac treated that club was also discussed at the session of the local parliament in mid-December. The councilors of the ruling civic list People Win then, among other things, announced to the public for the first time that in the past two years, FC Arsenal received money from the city coffers in addition to the budget funds designated for financing sports and that it was in a privileged position compared to all the others sports clubs in Tivat. As it was heard, from the end of 2017 until today, instead of the budgeted total of 325 thousand euros, Arsenal received as much as 444 thousand euros, of which as much as 138 thousand from the current budget reserve, but despite this, in mid-December the club had outstanding debts in the amount of 108.525 euros.
"Based on the observed situation, the internal audit of the Municipality comes to the opinion that adequate controls have not been established in the management system of FC Arsenal, as well as in the procedure for distributing funds for sports. We believe that the club does not manage the risk of liquidity and it has been brought to a state where outstanding obligations are twice as large from the amount of the budget approved for 2018. We are also of the opinion that it is necessary to convene an extraordinary Assembly and make a decision on the further way the club functions and its strategic goals, with the obligation to adopt the founding act at one of the next sessions of the Municipal Assembly," the opinion in the draft report says on the internal audit, which "Vijesti" had access to.
An internal audit entered FC Arsenal based on the request of the new mayor, Željko Komnenović, on October 30. The audit was carried out by the head of the Internal Audit Service, Jela Mrdak, and the junior internal auditor, Sunčica Krivokapić, and they found a number of deficiencies in the procedure, starting with the fact that there is not even an act of the Municipality on the establishment of the sports organization FC Arsenal in accordance with Article 50 of the Law on sport, that such an act was never adopted by the local parliament, but Arsenal's registration was done on the basis of a statement signed by the then mayor Ivan Novosel (DPS) in July 2014. It cannot be considered a founding document because Arsenal is an amateur club, which formally and legally is an association of citizens who intend to engage in sports as a non-profit activity.
Among other things, the report says, the auditors did not receive all the requested documentation from the Secretariat for Youth, Sports and Social Affairs because "the secretary (Darka Ognjanović - ed.) forbade the independent advisor for sports in that secretariat to provide documentation and information to the audit." .
"This does not surprise us, because the same company did not respond to the report on the audit of the allocation of funds for sports about the implementation of the given recommendations, which is why it is responsible," the report says.
In the meantime, Ognjanović was relieved of her duties as secretary for sports because that body was abolished by a new decision on the internal organization of the local administration in Tivat. The audit stated that in the period from the beginning of 2018 until now, the FC Assembly did not adopt the club's work programs and financial reports, which according to the Statute, it needed to submit for approval to the Board of Directors headed by Arsić at the time.
According to the Statute, the president of the Board of Directors is responsible for his work to the club's Assembly. The audit received those programs and reports, unsigned by Arsić, from the accounting agency that kept the club's business books. The head of the FC Assembly since October 2018 is the police officer Duško Obradović, who is also engaged as the technical director of the club, according to the work contract, for a monthly compensation of 300 euros. The audit stated that this kind of engagement of Obradović in those two functions was not legal because they are incompatible duties.
The audit stated that the Assembly, headed by Obradović, did not even make decisions on the amount of remuneration of the president and members of the club's bodies, but despite this, the Arsenal Board of Directors, headed by Arsić, distributed money to the people he hired for various positions in the club. In 2018 and 2019, there were three people on the payroll who then received a total of 7.800 euros (2018) and 9.150 euros (2019).
In 2020, there are as many as six people on the payroll of the Arsenal administration, and as much as 17.600 euros will be spent on their salaries. Obradović, who this year receives a total of 3.600 euros from Arsenal as technical director according to the work contract he concluded with the president of the Board of Directors Arsić, at the same time as the president of the club's Assembly should have controlled the work of Arsić as the president of the Board of Directors, which the audit assessed as an unacceptable conflict of interest.
At the same time, the audit concluded that the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Arsić, at his own discretion, determined the remuneration of the secretary, technical secretary and other staff in the club, and that he did so without the decision of the Club Assembly as required by the Statute.
The auditors also found that on February 1, 2019, Arsenal's management entered into a new contract for the provision of bookkeeping services at seven times the monthly price compared to what Arsenal had been paying to the same firm years before. The new price paid by FC to the company "Knjigovodstvene usluge doo" Tivat is 350 euros per month, and previously these services were in the period 2014-2016. paid only 50 euros per month. At the same time, in the financial plan of the club, the cost for bookkeeping is shown only in the amount of 100 euros per month.
"It is not clear why the incorrect amount was shown. We draw attention to the fact that the cost of bookkeeping services increased in 2019-2020 from 600 to 4.200 euros per year...", the auditor's report says.
The auditors stated that allocations from the Municipality's budget for Arsenal have been growing rapidly since 2018, when Arsić became the head of Arsenal, and Kusovac sat in the mayor's chair, followed by the support of the secretary for sports Ognjanović. With 57,5 thousand euros that Arsenal received from the city coffers in 2017, the payments from the Municipality's budget to the account of the FC in 2018 increase to as much as 118.550 euros, while the plan was to pay them only 47,5 thousand euros. That year, even 60 thousand euros were paid to Arsenal from the current budget reserve. Money from the budget reserve was allocated only on the basis of the decision of Kusovac as the President of the Municipality, with the indication that it will be deducted the following year from the regular funds that Arsenal was supposed to receive from the city coffers.
However, according to the auditor's findings, Arsenal and the next, in 2019, received significantly more money compared to the budget plan of the Municipality, where it was planned to pay them 103.000 euros, and they received as much as 162,1 thousand euros, of which another 57,1 thousand from the current budget reserve. The Municipality's budget plan for 2020 provided for a total allocation of 120.000 euros for Arsenal, and so far they have received 106.000 euros, of which 21.000 euros from the current budget reserve until the departure of Kusovac from the post of mayor. The auditors stated that Kusovac gave Arsenal municipal money both before and beyond the regular distribution of that type of budget funds intended for sports, based on incomplete documentation, without detailed explanations of why the money was given and without the opinion of the competent secretariat.
The audit concluded that the data on the number of children enrolled in Arsenal's football school do not agree with the data on the club's income from the membership fee that children pay for it, and that the club's obligations to the sports director on this basis are currently 19.000 euros. Interestingly, a contract was previously signed with Antoš Golub, who is the sports director of Arsenal, that, in addition to his regular salary of 800 euros per month, he will receive as much as 1.400 euros per month from the membership fees of at least 70 children that he is obliged to provide for the football school. Therefore, the sports director pocketed the largest part of the club's officially realized income from membership fees, which, according to the bookkeeping data at FC Arsenal, amounted to 2018 in 16.905, 18.565 the following year, and 2020 euros by the beginning of November 11.190.
"The obligation to the sports director (1.400 euros from monthly membership fee income - ed.) was not shown as a planned expense in the financial plan, which is an integral part of the club's co-financing agreement. Also, it was not defined who pays the tax obligations based on this payment. Obligations on this basis, they are 19.000 euros until December 31.12.2020, XNUMX, according to the report submitted to us by the club," stated the auditors.
It was also established that FC Arsenal has not received any income from sponsorships or donations for two years, that the club's website was maintained by a company associated with a person employed by the Secretariat for Sports who was also the president of the Committee for the Distribution of Budget Funds to Sports Clubs, and that now the former management of Arsenal did not report to Mayor Komnenović that the club, among other things, owes 27,5 thousand euros for electricity, or 19 thousand euros to sports director Golub based on the contract for the football school. It was established that Arsenal owes 45,7 thousand euros in salaries and fees, that is, it has a little over 14 thousand euros in unpaid debts to suppliers and service providers.
Yesterday, as before, Kusovac did not respond to the offer for comment, and Arsić was previously offered to present his part of the story related to the audit findings, which he refused.
Illegally issued property of the Municipality
The audit stated that the Board of Arsenal, headed by Kusovac at the time, illegally rented out the property of the Municipality - the fence around the football stadium in the city park.
It was established that shortly before Arsić's arrival at the head of the club, Kusovac unilaterally terminated the cooperation between FC and Porto Montenegro, who, in exchange for branding the fence around the stadium with his own colors and without writing the company's logo or placing any advertisements on the wall in the contact zone Porto Montenegro settlement, paid the club as much as 12.000 euros per month. However, as determined by the auditors, Arsenal's Board of Directors already on June 15, 2018 concluded a contract with the company Mediativa from Tivat, to which it leased the fence wall of the city stadium for the installation of advertising panels for a period of one year, at a price that is 36 times lower from that paid to the club by Porto Montenegro.
"The rental price for the services that are the subject of this contract is 333 euros per month, including VAT. After the expiration of the rental contract, "Mediativa" addressed FC "Arsenal" with a letter on 18.5.2020/11.560/24.7.2020, in which it was stated that it renounces further use of the leased space on which the billboards were placed, which also specified the specification of the works that were not contracted, in the amount of EUR XNUMX. Then the president of the Board of Directors of FC Arsenal (Rado Arsić - author's note) made a decision on XNUMX/XNUMX/XNUMX accepting the act and the specification. All this is stated in the explanation of the decision of the president of the club's board of directors, which is not in accordance with the contract, neither on the basis of the price per month, nor the works performed, nor the date," the internal audit report says.
They also note that "there is no record of the completed works or the handover of the tenant's works", and that they were not provided with "a report on the club's realized income on this basis for the period from July 2018 to July 2020." FC Arsenal had no legal reason to enter into a contract on the release of the wall because he did not have the consent of the Municipality," the auditors concluded. The company Mediativa is majority owned by Gordana Glavočić, Rado Arsić's sister, and Glavočić is also the executive director of that company.
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