Four medical experts took almost a third of the money paid by the Prosecutorial Council (PC) in 2023 for expert opinions in criminal proceedings in Montenegrin prosecutors' offices.
During that period, TS paid out just over 543.000 euros, of which four experts Nemanja Radojevic, Miodrag Šoć, Krsto Nikolic i Ivana Curović, took around 170.000 euros. Radojević took the most money, more than 50.000 euros.
Prosecutors were not so generous towards the medical expert Željko Golubović. He has, however, charged well for his services from Montenegrin courts in criminal proceedings. Of all the experts for expert testimony before the courts, he took the most, around 40.000 euros in 2023 and the first half of 2024.
Right behind him is Radojević, with around 30.000 euros.
Experts also receive money based on court executions. And on this basis, Radojević received the most. Almost all the money collected through public bailiffs intended for experts went to him. Out of a total of 78.000 euros in executions, in the first half of 2024, Radojević received 75.000, including the costs of lawyers and executioners. Radojević filed lawsuits for unpaid fees and thus received many times the increased amounts from the state, which was late with payments to the expert.
So, in a year and a half, if you add up what prosecutors' offices and courts paid for expert opinions, Radojević received around 150.000 euros.
To the greatest extent possible, this data Center for Investigative Journalism of Montenegro (CIN-CG) and the Center for Civil Liberties (CEGAS) came with free access to information from the Prosecutorial and Judicial Councils.
The latest updated list of experts published by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) includes 111 medical and forensic experts, most of whom have never been engaged in these court proceedings.
THE JUDICIARY SHOWS IMPOTENCE
Director of the Center for Civil Liberties (CEGAS) Marija Popović Kalezić He points out to CIN-CG that it is incredible that the same experts are constantly being chosen.
"So you keep electing the same person, and then he sues you for not paying on time, and on that basis he gets a huge amount of money," says Popović Kalezić.
And by constantly hiring the same people and allowing experts to earn tens of thousands of euros based on lawsuits, the state and the judiciary are showing negligence, for which neither the experts nor the laws are responsible, Popović Kalezić estimates.
The director of CEGAS emphasizes that the problems are multiple: inadequate selection of court experts, re-election procedures, education and accountability, lack of any form of selection, failure to initiate the procedure for dismissing experts by judges and prosecutors, when required by law. The problem is also the constant selection of the same ones.
The TS report for 2023 states that 5.822 expert opinions were conducted in all prosecutors' offices that year, mostly in the field of medicine and forensic medicine, 2.651. This is the first year in which the TS has published this type of data in the report, while the SS has not yet published it.
CIN-CG has not received information from either the Prosecutorial Council or the Judicial Council on how many lawsuits have been filed due to delays in paying compensation to experts, why these compensations are not paid on time, and how they explain that for several years, medical experts have been the highest paid and most engaged, given that there are a large number of medical experts in Montenegro.
The SS says that these are issues for the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), while the MoJ states that these are issues for the Judicial and Prosecutorial Council. The TS claims that payment to experts is made when the prosecutor's office submits a decision, usually within eight days. And whether the prosecutor's offices have money for these purposes depends on the monthly budget releases of the Ministry of Finance, the TS says.
A lawsuit can only be avoided by making regular payments, Popović Kalezić points out.
"It is incomprehensible that the person who should pay for the costs of expert opinions does not do so on time. This is a purely technical issue, where the judicial authority can also request the intervention of the Ministry of Finance, so that the claims of the experts are paid in a timely manner, so that the state, i.e. citizens, do not have to give additional money," emphasizes the director of CEGAS.
KCCG DOES NOT KEEP RECORDS OF WHO IS AN EXPERT AND HOW MANY
It is also highly controversial that the Clinical Center of Montenegro (KCCG) does not keep records or control how many hours experts spend on court expert opinions performed within this health institution. There is no data on the extent to which experts use state resources to perform their private work, which they charge heavily for, so all the money goes to them, although they may be using the capacities of KCCG, or some other state institution.
Even after repeated insistence, the Clinical Center of Montenegro did not respond to CIN-CG's questions about why they do not keep records of the work of court experts who perform medical examinations on the premises of the Clinical Center.
Thus, our questions remained unanswered about how many hours individual doctors employed at the KCCG spend on expert opinions, whether this is deducted from their salary, and whether it is controversial that they use the KCCG's working hours and capacities for private business...
CIN-CG first forwarded the questions to the director of KCCG Aleksandar Radović, and he announced that the director of the Center for Forensic Medicine of the Croatian Center for Forensic Medicine, Ivana Čurović, is responsible for the answers. Čurović is one of the four experts who took the most money for their services from prosecutors' offices in 2023...
The Ministry of Justice told CIN-CG that the issue of transparency and accountability in the work of all institutions is of utmost importance for trust in their work.
"If there were any misuse of state resources for private purposes in any institution, we certainly cannot speak of good practice," the Ministry of Justice said.
They add that it is important that any use of state resources be in accordance with legal procedure, in order to prevent possible abuses.
"It is necessary to improve cooperation between all competent institutions in order to ensure effective control and compliance with legal procedures," the Ministry stated.
There are no mechanisms to protect state resources when forensic examinations are conducted within state premises, according to the CEGAS analysis "Study on forensic examinations in Montenegro", from October 2024.
Popović Kalezić emphasizes for CIN-CG that all institutions that conduct expert assessments must keep records of the number of expert assessments conducted, the use of certain consumable materials for expert assessments, as well as the objects used during the assessment, along with a clear schedule of the duration of the assessment and the name of the person who conducted the assessment.
"An institution will show a certain amount of responsibility with the care of a good host, when it knows who, how, how much, for what purpose and in what way uses its resources, including KCCG," emphasizes the director of CEGAS.
He adds that it would be extremely important for those who use state resources for their private businesses to pay institutions for the use of those resources.
MORE THAN 65 PERCENT NOT ENGAGED
More than 65 percent of experts were never hired during 2023, according to a CEGAS analysis.
The Law on Court Experts states that "for expert testimony in a particular case, the court, state prosecutor's office, or other body conducting the procedure, as a rule, appoints an expert who resides in the territory of that court, state prosecutor's office, or other body conducting the procedure, taking into account that experts from the same field are engaged evenly."
The Ministry of Justice emphasizes that the proportional representation of experts is not mandatory, since engagement is conditioned by the number of experts in a particular area, their professional qualifications, the complexity of the case, and other circumstances.
Popović Kalezić told CIN-CG that he understands the lack of choice of experts when it comes to certain professions, "and by that I mean exclusively those with one or two court experts available (the field of copyright, antiquities, digital evidence, forensics of video materials and photographs, computer forensics, mobile phone forensics, archival profession, forensic genetics...), but where there is a choice, choosing exclusively one or two experts is extremely questionable and leads to the possibility of bias, subjectivity and discrimination."
She recalls that one often hears from prosecutors and judges that they always choose the same experts because of their trust and previous professional assignments. She emphasizes, however, that regardless of trust, it is questionable that prosecutors and judges do not leave the possibility for other experts to be chosen. She also questions the practice of judicial authorities not resorting to initiating proceedings to dismiss experts, when the need arises.
The CEGAS study concludes that there is still no adequate control over the work of experts, there is no mechanism for equal assignment of work, the majority of experts operate outside the association, and are therefore without any control. It also points out that experts do not have access to training and development, that there are not enough court experts in certain areas, while in certain areas there are too many.
The Judicial Council's 2023 report states that a frequent cause of postponement of court hearings is the delay of experts in preparing their findings. It also points out that judges are not sufficiently resorting to punishing experts, as well as other legally prescribed methods, to ensure that findings and opinions are submitted to the courts within the prescribed deadlines.
According to several international and domestic analyses, another problem is that prosecutors and judges do not examine the quality of the work of experts.
Amendments to the Law on the State Prosecutor's Office from June last year provide that disciplinary proceedings may be initiated against a prosecutor if he or she fails to submit a proposal for the dismissal of an expert witness, if there are legal grounds for doing so. These rules do not yet apply to judges.
CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS ARE IN PROGRESS AGAINST THREE EXPERTS
The latest updated list of court experts from December last year includes 704 of them, with the caveat that two are not working until the criminal proceedings are completed. Saša Zejak i Omer MarkisicThe two are on trial in the case against the former president of the Commercial Court. Blaž Jovanić, who is accused of organizing a criminal group, including these two experts, which is accused of damaging eight companies for hundreds of thousands of euros in bankruptcy proceedings.
According to CIN-CG, a separate criminal proceeding is also being conducted against a construction expert. Ranke Brajkovic, but the MoJ website does not have that information, so she apparently continued to work unhindered. According to court documents that CIN-CG has seen, she is on trial for giving false testimony. The first-instance verdict acquitted her of giving false testimony in a civil case in October 2021 before the Kolašin Basic Court that part of the cadastral plot was developed construction land, that is, that it was brought for its intended purpose, and that the disputed land could not be returned to its previous owners. The High Court in Bijelo Polje is waiting to issue a verdict on the appeal of the Kolašin prosecutor's office.
CIN-CG previously wrote that the Ministry of Justice has dismissed only one court expert in the last six years.
From the department he manages Bojan Božović They tell CIN-CG that after the court expert was dismissed Goran Dedic There were no new procedures for the dismissal of court experts, because no proposals for dismissal were submitted to the Court Experts Commission in 2022, 2023 and 2024.
THERE IS NO RESPONSIBILITY, THEY WILL CHANGE THE LAW
The "Comparative Analysis of the Role of Expert Witnesses in the Judicial Systems of the Western Balkans", from 2019, also cites the unequal distribution of work assignments to expert witnesses as one of the key shortcomings.
The lack of qualified court experts leads to a small number of experienced experts being constantly engaged by the courts and being overloaded with work, and in all jurisdictions considered there is an unequal distribution of work among experts, the analysis says.
“The more reliable the expert and the more work they have, the greater the risk of delays in delivering findings and opinions. This can become a serious problem because courts tend to be too lenient towards those court experts they rely on the most, and are hesitant to impose sanctions for delays. Also, the lack of adequate allocation of cases among experts can raise concerns about transparency, as it leaves room for favoritism and corruption,” the analysis warns.
They, among other things, recommend introducing the obligation to publish a public call for appointment at the request of courts and prosecutors' offices, in order to align the actual needs for experts in a particular field with the availability of experts in that field.
They recommend that the judge/prosecutor order payment to the court expert soon after submitting the findings and opinion, and that it would be beneficial to avoid paying experts until after the proceedings are concluded:
"Courts have no reason to accumulate debts towards court experts, especially in civil proceedings, because the funds should already be available in the court's deposit accounts after the advance payment. Therefore, the court expert could be paid very soon after the submission of the findings and opinion. This would prevent the accumulation of debts and increase the overall efficiency of the work of court experts."
According to the guidelines of the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ), the repeated selection of the same expert for the same type of expert opinion, by the same court, may negatively affect the factual and personal independence of that expert:
"Courts should also be wary of situations of monopoly over expert testimony. Rotation of experts may be considered an appropriate way of avoiding reciprocal dependence and enhancing the independence of experts in relation to the court."
The Montenegrin Justice Strategy from 2024 to 2027 notes that in practice there is a noticeable lack of implementation of mechanisms for the accountability of court experts in cases of unprofessional or inefficient conduct.
"Improving the expertise of court experts is an area that is still not systematically addressed and requires further intervention, taking into account the heterogeneity of areas covered by court experts. A pressing problem in this area is the unevenness of expertise that results in the frequent engagement of the same experts," the Strategy emphasizes.
It is added that in practice, a major challenge is the lack of motivation of court experts to accept cases, especially in remote courts that require traveling to hearings, but also the excessive workload of the number of cases and the inefficiency of the work of individual experts, which negatively affects the efficiency of court proceedings.
"The development of the court expert training system requires intensive work in the coming period, with the priority being the creation of a plan for the further development of this system, which must identify the primary areas of expertise in which it is necessary to develop training programs as a priority, as well as define mechanisms, deadlines and competencies," the document states.
The existing Law on Court Experts has numerous shortcomings and it is good that it will be amended soon, says Popović Kalezić, who is also a member of the Working Group for Amending the Law on Court Experts.
The Ministry of Justice states that work will be done to strengthen the system of disciplinary responsibility of judicial professions, including expert witnesses, and that changes will be made to the Law.
"With the aim of systematically improving legal solutions in this area. It is planned that the work on drafting the law will be completed by the end of 2025," according to the department headed by Božović.
Considering that expert opinions most often have a decisive influence on the outcome of court proceedings, the authorities should devote much more attention to improving the legal framework and practice of this important profession.
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