Analyzing about 700 judgments of the High Court, adopted according to the plea agreements of the Special State Prosecutor's Office (SDT) and the Higher State Prosecutor's Office (VDT) in Podgorica, numerous illogicalities were observed, which raise doubts about the legality of the use of that institute in Montenegro, the conference said. which was organized by the Center for Investigative Journalism of Montenegro (CIN-CG), the Center for Civil Liberties (CEGAS) and the weekly "Monitor".
In her opening address, the representative of Montenegro before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, Valentina Pavličić, said that the institution of plea agreements began to be "timidly applied during 2015 and 2016".
"However, we have had the expansion of this institute for the last three or four years," said Pavličić, adding that she already has a sufficient number of decisions based on which analysis can determine whether this institute is being used properly in the Montenegrin system.
She noted that the analysis of the Supreme Court showed that the penal policy when it comes to organized crime and corruption is mild. "This certainly gives us the right to turn on the alarm, both in the prosecutor's office and in the judicial organization, to sit down and see what we got with the application of the institute on confession of guilt," she said.
She pointed out that, on the one hand, we probably have a larger number of completed cases, but on the other hand, we do not have the satisfaction of justice.
Pavličić added that in the period from the beginning of the application of the agreement, no guidelines were adopted that would be necessary for all those participating in the conclusion of the agreement.
The executive director of the Center for Civil Liberties (CEGAS), Marija Popović Kalezić, said that in almost all of these cases, prosecutors went "far below the legal minimum" stipulated in the Criminal Code, while judges approve agreements "without going into their essence and without taking into account legal restrictions ".
"What is also very controversial is that in the last six years, this institute was used in almost all cases of organized crime and corruption, with convictions that did not affect prevention, nor the satisfaction of justice and fairness," Popović said at a press conference. Kalezic.
She also said that the authorities should investigate the possible responsibility of the prosecutors and judges who concluded and approved these agreements, but also find a way to limit the use of this institute until the Supreme State Prosecutor's Office and the Ministry of Justice complete the analysis of the concluded agreements and come to any possible of legal changes in this part.
CIN-CG journalist Maja Boričić pointed out that in a large number of analyzed verdicts based on the plea agreement, the names of the prosecutors are not mentioned at all.
"It is very worrying and we should see why it was not done," said Boricic at a joint press conference.
Among the prosecutors of the Special State Prosecutor's Office, the most agreements from 2016 to 2021 were concluded by Mira Samardžić (62), followed by Saša Čađenović (13) and Tatjana Žižić (13), and the least by Stojanka Radović (3), Zorica Milanović (1) and Lidija Vukcevic (1). In the case of the Podgorica VDT, the plea agreement in the same period of time was most often concluded by Tatjana Begović (67), Maja Jovanović (59) and Zoran Vučinić (48).
When it comes to the judges of the High Court in Podgorica who approved SDT agreements, this was most often done by Boris Savić (43), and VDT agreements by Predrag Tabaš (140).
Out of a total of 326 plea agreements concluded by SDT, only 10, or 3,1 percent, were rejected.
"Analyzing the reports of the Prosecutor's Council and the State Prosecutor's Office, as well as the reports of the Special State Prosecutor's Office and the High Court in Podgorica, we noticed that there is no explanation why these several SDT agreements were rejected," said Boričić.
She added that the number of rejected VDT agreements in Podgorica in this six-year period is even lower, out of 490 concluded agreements, only seven, or 1,4 percent, were rejected.
"However, unlike the SDT, in the VDT report we have an explanation why these agreements were rejected. Thus, of the seven, five were rejected due to the defendant's withdrawal from the agreement, while one was rejected due to the complaint of the injured party, and the other because the punishment was not proportionate to the crime committed," explained Boričić.
It was also pointed out at the conference that from 2016 to 2021, the SDT concluded 40,6 percent of the analyzed agreements with returnees, and the Higher State Prosecutor's Office concluded 44 percent. In the research, they also observed that a large number of agreements were signed with multiple returnees in the commission of criminal acts, and that it even happened that unconvicted persons received a higher sentence than previously convicted members of criminal groups.
"When we have in mind these data, but also what we presented in the texts that almost all agreements related to financial crime ended with suspended sentences or prison terms, and that members of criminal organizations received three months in prison for the most serious crimes of drug trafficking, weapons and people, we can conclude that there are serious failures in application, but also real doubts that this institute has been misused in our country," said Boričić.
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