Even after more than 14 years since the former Naval Technical Overhaul Institute "Sava Kovačević", the Arsenal in Tivat, stopped working because the Government sold it as a plot for building apartments for the market to the company "Adriatic Marinas", the liquidation process has not yet been completed a company that has existed and operated for more than a century.
Meanwhile, the state has, in one way or another, used up all the funds the liquidation team raised by selling the remaining movable assets of the Arsenal after the closure of the military shipyard in July 2007, when about 470 people lost their jobs. Therefore, none of the workers or their heirs will receive anything from the liquidation of the company they worked for, although a special agreement signed by the Arsenal Trade Union in 2007 with the Government and the Municipality of Tivat stipulated that the workers would share the money left after the complete administrative shutdown of the military institution.
"The liquidation procedure of VU MTRZ 'Sava Kovačević' Tivat is still ongoing because there is an unresolved court case with the company 'Cofis' which is currently before the Court of Appeal, but also the lack of decisions by the founder regarding the property exempted from the jurisdiction of the liquidator. The part of the property that was left under the jurisdiction of the liquidator has long since been resolved. The end of the process is uncertain because it depends on the end of the court case with the company 'Cofis', and then the decision of the founder", the Ministry of Defense (MoD) explained to "News" why, even 14 years after the closure of Arsenal, the legal end of the company and with it is not in sight regulation of all obligations towards those who expect something from that process.
Liquidation also delays the collection of VAT
From this sentence, however, one can only guess the dimensions of the potential affair that is hidden behind everything - the controversial sale of Arsenal in November 2006 by the then Government to Canadian businessman Peter Munk for 3,26 million euros. Namely, the product of that arrangement, which was put into effect by the then Prime Minister Milo Đukanović (DPS), is the fact that in addition to the Arsenal facilities, which in the meantime were almost all demolished in order to build the nautical and tourist center Porto Montenegro, Manko's film "Adriatic Marinas" also received 174 items of movable assets of Arsenal, estimated value of 5.476.975 euros. Adriatic Marinas resold all those assets, among which the most valuable were two Arsenal floating docks, to third parties in a very short period of time, but the VAT that should have been charged on those goods has been burdening Arsenal's liquidation process for ten years and is not allowing it to be completed . This, after all, is confirmed by the response of the MoD to "Viijest", in which the department of Minister Olivera Injac mentions that in order to complete the liquidation of Arsenal, in addition to ending the dispute with the company "Cofiis", a "founder's decision" is also needed. The problem, however, is that the founder is not the Government, which sold the company's assets and closed it down, but the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, i.e. its Ministry of Defense from Belgrade. This is also written in the latest amendments to the Decision on the registration of MTRZ in the Central Registry of the Commercial Court from April this year, when its newest liquidator, Vladan Martić, was registered.
"From the business books of VU MTRZ 'Sava Kovačević' Tivat during the liquidation procedure, the movable property that was handed over to the company Adriatic Marinas - Porto Montenegro, Tivat was deregistered. Movable assets were written off at their book value, without compensation", the Montenegrin MoD told "Vijesta".
They point out that the liquidation of the largest business collective in Tivat "began and took place under specific conditions, starting from the very registration of the Institution as a business company, up to the limitation in the disposal of the assets held by the liquidator".
"Namely, more than 85 percent of the book value of the property was not under the control of the liquidator, and in this regard, it could not be the subject of sale," said the Ministry of Defense.
What was in their jurisdiction, the liquidators of Arsenal, and until now there were five of them (battleship captain Vučeta Stanišić from the Croatian Navy, i.e. officers of the MoD Savo Milašinović, Budo Vuković, Marko Drobnjak and the current one, colonel Dr. Vladan Martić) sold to auctions and at the same time, for each sold item of machinery, tools and equipment, VAT was also properly collected from the customers. The liquidators sold the equipment, which was worth about 4 million euros in accounting terms, and more than 250 thousand euros poured into the state coffers based on the VAT collected. However, there is no reliable data on whether and, if so, how much, the state received money from VAT during the resale to third parties of Arsenal's movable property, which in 2006 was practically a gift to the company "Adriatic Marinas".
Several million euros of money received on the account of MTRZ in liquidation, in the meantime, have been almost completely spent, both to pay for the work costs of the liquidation team itself and the administration, and also for non-purpose because, according to the orders of the former DPS management of the Ministry of Defense, these funds that should have belonged to the dismissed workers , in the meantime money taken and spent for no purpose. Namely, the liquidation administration, by order of the Ministry of Defense, during the closing of the transaction with the then owner of "Adriatic Marinas", Peter Mank, set aside 130 thousand euros to pay for the services of a Croatian company that exported part of the dangerous chemicals from the Arsenal and destroyed them in a specialized facility in Austria. The obligation to remove those chemicals was on the state as the seller of Arsenal's property, but the government "scratched" here for the money and interests of the former workers of the defunct Tivat shipyard.
An even more drastic example is the taking of 300 thousand dollars from the liquidation mass of Arsenal, which the Government directed so that it could fully control the military factory "4. novembar" (now "Tara") in Mojkovac. It was soon privatized by the state, selling it to the Swiss company BTI, and the funds that the state took from the liquidation assets of the Tivat Arsenal were used to create the formal preconditions for the transaction to be completed.
Bošković, Vučinić, Pejanović Đurišić
"News" at the time when the Ministry of Defense was headed by Predrag Bošković (DPS) did not want to announce who and when requested and allowed the misuse of money that should have belonged to the former Tivat ship repairmen.
At the time when those decisions were made and implemented, in addition to Bošković, DPS officials Boro Vučinić and Milica Pejanović Đurišić were in charge of the defense department.
The current MO "Vijesta" did not precisely answer what the final financial effects of Arsenal's liquidation process are, pointing out only that "due to the longer duration of the liquidation process, the financial effects are certainly reduced".
It was indirectly confirmed that the previous management of that department, nor the Government led by the DPS, had no understanding of the proposals coming from the liquidators to speed up the process and finish it while there is still something to be distributed to the workers:
"During 2010, the then liquidation manager Vučeta Stanišić submitted to the competent authorities a proposal for the liquidation of MTRZ under abbreviated procedure, which was foreseen as a possibility by the then Law on Business Companies. It is proposed that the MoD take over court cases, financial documents and remaining assets, with the necessary decisions being made by the founder. No official response was ever received to the proposal. Also, from 2010 to 2017, proposals were initiated on several occasions to solve key problems that remained unresolved, and which concern assets exempted from the jurisdiction of the liquidation team. In the period in question, the Government did not initiate decisions and activities to resolve this issue".
And the "question in question" is more than big because someone from the governments led by Đukanović, Željko Šturanović, Igor Lukšić and Duško Marković in previous years had to make a formal decision to sell Arsenal's movable property worth almost 5,5 million euros, which is practically donated to the company "Adriatic Marinas" - written off, and with it also tax claims on behalf of VAT of about a million euros. So far, none of the DPS leaders of the Government or the Ministry of Defense has agreed to do such a thing, although the Government has in the meantime made numerous other decisions by which it allocated parts of the Arsenal's former movable property to various other institutions, such as the Tivat Health Center, the Institute of Metallurgy, as well as to the VCG Navy itself. That property, which is "covered" by the Government's decisions on its allocation to third parties, is incomparably less valuable than the one that was gifted to Arsenal's buyer in 2006, and to this day has not been officially written off from the state balance sheets.
The docks immediately went to Germany and the Netherlands for 5 million
According to the contract signed by Đukanović and Mank in November 2006, the new owner, who for 3,26 million euros bought about eighty buildings of the Tivat military shipyard and got the right to use about 90 square meters of land on the coast and more than half a million square meters of water for 300.000 years, comes also received almost 5,5 million euros worth of 174 items of movable assets of Arsenal. Among other things, Adriatic Marinas received both floating docks - a large one with a capacity of 12 tons and a small one with a capacity of 3.500 tons, a synchro-lift with a capacity of 900 tons, both Arsenal tugboats, four oil and oil tankers, a number of various lathes, drills, planers, and grinders. , circular saws, milling machines, cranes of various capacities, pumps, compressors, electrical units, diesel-electric power station, tanks for oil, oil and compressed air, machines for manual sheet bending, baskets for transporting people and cargo, ultrasonic devices for measuring the thickness of sheets , an X-ray machine for welding control, a portaflux machine for magnetic testing, several dynamometers and micrometers, a fire truck and firefighting equipment. In the meantime, Adriatic Marinas resold almost all of these funds on the domestic or foreign market - where both Arsenal's floating docks ended up - the large one in 2008 in Germany, and the small one in 2009 in the Netherlands. Adriatic Marinas took a total of about 5 million euros from customers for the docks alone, but the state did not charge VAT on that transaction.
"According to Article 25 of the Law on Value Added Tax, VAT is paid at a rate of 0 percent on the export of products/services from Montenegro", the Customs and Revenue Administration explained to "News" why the state had no fiscal income from these transactions, noting that is "based on customs declarations and data available to the Administration, the exporter of both floating docks was Adriatic Marinas Tivat doo".
They announced that neither VU MTRZ "Sava Kovačević" nor "Adriatic Marinas" have outstanding tax and customs obligations due to the Revenue Administration.
The MoD also confirmed that the former military shipyard in liquidation has no outstanding tax and customs obligations, noting that "all previous obligations to the state's tax system have been settled."
The marathon court case is still ongoing
The Montenegrin branch of the company "Cofis" from Belgrade, with which the liquidation administration of Arsenal still has an active court case, filed a lawsuit against MTRZ back in 2007, accusing it of delaying the overhaul of five old missile boats of the "Osa I" type that SCG sold to Egypt in 2004.
Before delivery to the customer, the ships were overhauled in Tivat, and the original contract between Arsenal and the company "Cofis" from 2004 was worth 2.313.700 dollars and implied that the Tivat military shipyard perform the work in accordance with the dynamics according to which the Belgrade company was supposed to fulfill some of his obligations - procurement of materials and equipment, successive payment of works, etc. At the very start, the work was delayed for almost a year because "Cofis" did not deliver new M-504B type main propulsion engines to Arsenal at the agreed time, which were to be installed on the Egyptian missile boats. The first three engines to be installed in the first ship were five months late, while spare parts for the 230 mm AK-30 cannons and means of communication were delivered to the Arsenal a year late. Later, problems began with strikes by Arsenal workers who tried to fight against the Government's decision to sell the shipyard to Manka.
In the meantime, new, necessary additional works were constantly opened on the Egyptian ships, beyond the originally contracted ones, so Arsenal issued new invoices to the company "Cofis", and the Belgrade company, although it duly signed and accepted most of them, did not pay them. Due to the delay in the work on the first two ships, Arsenal left the overhaul of the remaining three Egyptian missile boats to the company "Cofis" itself and its partners, who used parts of the capacity of the Tivat shipyard for this purpose and again "tied" to themselves part of the Arsenal workers whom MTRZ then intended to employ in a very promising market for them in Libya.
The Belgrade firm demanded compensation of 5,93 million dollars in a lawsuit, and Arsenal retaliated in the next couple of years with counterclaims for unpaid works, unpaid capacity lease, lost profit and others, all in the total amount of 1,92 million euros and 1,14 million dollars. The commercial court ruled for the first time completely in favor of the company "Cofis", which is represented by lawyer Nikola Martinović from Podgorica, but that decision "fell" at the Court of Appeal, which overturned it and sent it back for a new trial. In the repeated proceedings, the Commercial Court fully accepted Arsenal's claims and ruled in favor of the Tivat company, to which "Cofis" was supposed to compensate for all damages. At the same time, the Commercial Court completely rejected the compensation claims of the company "Cofisa", even those that Arsenal itself did not dispute. Therefore, "Cofis" appealed to the Court of Appeal and the marathon court case is still ongoing.
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