International expert for the fight against corruption Drago Kos he said that the leadership of the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption, headed by Jelena Perović, had to resign as soon as possible.
"I'm sorry and I always feel terrible when I have to criticize my colleagues, but here the criticism is very appropriate. If they want good for both the Agency and themselves, they should leave their positions as soon as possible and leave them to people, without a stain on their name, to finally make the Agency what it had to be for years", said Kos to "Vijesta".
Commenting on numerous affairs in which the management of the Agency has been mentioned for years, as well as the latest findings of the Budget Inspection, after which the Special State Prosecutor's Office also formed a criminal case, Kos said that it was a question of the integrity of a public official.
"And that implies a high degree of integrity of a public official - when you realize that you have made a mistake, which is obvious in this example, you should leave the position and leave it to someone else, who will not be burdened with so much information from different institutions", he emphasized.
Those who didn't know what was happening now know
Last week, SDT formed a criminal case after the Ministry of Finance submitted to them the findings of the Budget Inspection in the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption.
This finding indicates that last year, Perović, in violation of regulations, distributed tens of thousands of euros to herself and some employees. The Budget Inspectorate believes that Perović wrote herself overtime and variables, for which she received almost 13.500 euros contrary to the Law on Salaries of Employees in the Public Sector and an additional more than 8.700 euros for work in the Working Group for determining the list of public officials.
It was specified that by looking at the billing lists, the Agency paid the director 536 euros based on work on national or religious holidays - May 22 and 23 and July 13 and 14. The inspectors also found that two people in the Agency had 310 overtime hours each, which is almost 39 working days.
Kos says that anti-corruption agencies are almost everywhere independent institutions and there are a limited number of reasons for which the leadership could be changed.
According to him, Montenegro has now reached a situation "when the leadership should not wait for it to be changed, but they would have to leave themselves".
Commenting on the Agency's claims that the media and institutional attacks came "...immediately after it was confirmed during recent meetings with representatives of the European Commission (EC) that the Agency is on the right track in terms of meeting standards, and that its work is aligned with international standards and recommendations" , Kos says that the EC has made it clear in the Progress Report what it thinks about the effects of that institution.
"The European Commission has warned that better quality decisions and a move away from a selective approach are needed. This is the worst kind of criticism that an anti-corruption institution can receive. I don't know which other institutions would praise such an Agency, if there is such a criticism in the EC Progress Report", emphasized Kos.
According to him, such an attitude of the director causes the most damage to her.
"If the MPs didn't understand what was happening before, they do now. That should be another reason for them to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and for the director to say goodbye to her position," said the international expert on the fight against corruption.
It is not the Law's fault that they do not apply it
Kos is also concerned about the amendments to the Law on Prevention of Corruption, especially in the part related to the protection of whistleblowers, which, according to the working version of the amended regulations, will be protected only by the court.
"I was really worried that, according to the working version of the Draft Amendments to the Law on Prevention of Corruption, there is no Agency as the first level of whistleblower protection. The Montenegrin Law on the Prevention of Corruption was relatively good in terms of the fight against corruption, but clearly the problem was that it was not applied properly. That's why to change the Law? This is a big step backwards, which is why Montenegro will have big problems in the process of joining the European Union, but also in relation to other international institutions", Kos assessed.
He reminded the decision-makers to take into account what is prescribed by the European Whistleblower Directive from 2019, but also the recommendations of the OSCE from 2021.
"I really hope that the Draft will be completed with everything that is missing now, including the lifestyles of officials, the extension of property registration to related persons, regardless of whether they are in the same household, because, otherwise, it will be obvious that Montenegro in the fight against corruption, it is taking a step backwards", said Kos.
He emphasized that in 2016, "I hoped that the Agency would move much faster and in the right direction, but I was obviously mistaken."
"The fact that an institution does not work as it should should not be a reason to lower the quality of the law, which was at a very high level," said Kos.
They work for the citizens, and how can the citizens trust them after this
Kos emphasizes that the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption must be subject to much stricter criteria when it comes to the publicity of work and the consumption of budget funds. "What I see in the findings of the inspection means that this kind of Agency, ignoring everything else, cannot continue to work. This is not the problem of the Agency as an institution, it is the problem of the people who manage it. If these people have failed in that work, the whole institution should not be punished because of that, the law should be changed and their powers should be taken away", he said.
According to him, it is necessary to "clear up with those people".
"I don't know a country where, if the findings of the inspection are correct, then it is clear that the management of the Agency cannot and must not continue to work. Anti-corruption institutions do not work for the European Union or any government, but for the citizens, in this case the citizens of Montenegro. If the citizens don't trust them, and I wonder how they will trust them now after such inspection findings, it makes no sense for that leadership to remain in office. It needs to be changed more quickly, and the Agency needs to be headed by people who will understand what their tasks are, who will perform them objectively, impartially, without the influence of politics, who will not violate the rules on spending public money, who know that they themselves must have integrity , so that they would ask for it from others", assessed Kos.
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