Last year alone, around 730.000 euros were allocated for standby and on-call duties in Montenegrin courts, three quarters of which were for standby, 530.000 euros. Several judges had more hours of standby in 2024 than the total hours that month, minus working hours.
This is the information that the Center for Investigative Reporting of Montenegro (CIN-CG) came up with by analyzing documentation obtained through free access to information from the Judicial Council (JC).
Court standby includes a period outside of working hours when criminal judges designated for this purpose can expect to return to work in emergency situations. They are paid extra for this and can significantly increase their salary.
Court presidents schedule how much time each person will be on standby each month, and payments for that work obligation are approved by the SS. There is no rulebook that organizes standby in courts, so this is left to the discretion of court presidents.
President of the Basic Court in Plav Mirjana Knezevic, in September 2024, she was on standby for 554 hours, according to the SS decision, and that month only had 552 hours available for that. She did not answer CIN-CG's questions about how this calculation was arrived at.
Knežević was on standby for over 500 hours every month last year, and there was no on-call duty in that court last year. Besides her, at least one other judge was on standby every month in the Plav court.
President of the court in Rožaje Mirsad Mujevic in February last year, according to the SS decision, he was on duty for 575 hours and on duty for one hour. He was engaged for these tasks for over fifty hours more than the possible 528 hours. The Judicial Council issued two decisions for that judge in that month. In the first, it approved all these hours, and in the second decision, there was a change, so it was stated that he was on duty for 522 hours and had six hours of on duty, which is the maximum number of hours for these tasks for February 2024.
In an interview with CIN-CG, Mujević said that it was a mistake by the SS, that in February he was on standby for 522 hours, and that in March he had 575 hours of standby.
This judge, unlike his colleague from Plav, still had certain hours of duty every month, and he also worked most of last year as the only judge in that court.
And the former president of the court in Cetinje Branislav Leković, recently a High Court judge, was granted 622 hours of standby and two hours of on-call duty in May last year, and that month had a total of 608 hours.
Leković, in an interview with CIN-CG, explains that this was an unintentional accounting error by the court in Cetinje.
"I submitted the standby/on-call schedule to the court's accounting department as of April 30, 4, with an indicated standby period starting from May 2024 to May 1, 5," he explains.
According to Judge Leković, the court's accounting department also incorrectly calculated the last day of April.
"The above has been reported to the court's accounting department for correction of the calculations," Judge Leković told CIN-CG.
He was on standby almost every month, and besides him, there were three or four other judges on standby for hundreds of hours each.
According to their asset records, the three of them reported a monthly salary of around 2.500 euros last year.
SS told CIN-CG that these three cases "obviously involve a technical error in writing numbers when creating a large number of solutions that are created every month, and that these examples represent rare exceptions, not the rule."
"The Secretariat of the Judicial Council will immediately proceed to verify the aforementioned data and correct the aforementioned technical errors, as well as eliminate all possible consequences if they have occurred," the Judicial Council stated.
At the Court of Appeals, 1.000 hours of standby time per month, no on-call time
It is also interesting that in the Court of Appeal, which is an appeals court, four or five judges were on standby for several hundred hours each month, and they did not have any on-call duty. Thus, the Court of Appeal had over 1.000 hours of standby every month, except in September, when there were slightly fewer - 896, and no hours of on-call duty, in any month of the year.
In the Basic Court in Kotor, there were also about ten judges on standby every month, working for several hundred hours, and they also had no on-call duty.
In most other courts, regardless of the size of the court, several judges were on standby for several hundred hours every month, some for the entire month, without any on-call duty or only a few dozen hours of on-call duty. The presidents of the courts in Bar, Bijelo Polje, Herceg Novi, Berane and Nikšić were on standby for the entire month almost every month, while, in addition to them, several other judges of those courts were on standby for several hundred hours. In the High Court in Bijelo Polje, several judges were on standby for all hours of that month every month.
The misdemeanor courts, the Basic Court and the High Court in Podgorica did not have judges who were on standby for the entire month, and these are the courts that have the most cases in work and the most on-call duty during the year.
The Supreme Court was the only one that did not have a stand-by judge every month last year. Stand-by judges were reported in January, July, August and November, when more judges were on stand-by, albeit for slightly fewer hours than in other courts, but they also did not have any stand-by judges last year.
The Supreme Court told CIN-CG that they are not authorized to speak about the readiness of judges in other courts, but that in the practice of that court, readiness is assigned to judges and officials who act in the Criminal Division, in order to deal with urgent detention cases, during holidays, as well as annual leave.
"Supreme Court judges have been on standby for 32 to 64 hours during the previous holidays," according to the Supreme Court, which got a new president at the end of last year. Valentina Pavličić.
At the end of last year, there was a visible decrease in hours of availability, so in the Basic Court in Herceg Novi, for the first time, in November and December, three judges were not available all hours of the month, and in most other courts, the number of hours of availability of individual judges is also decreasing.
The question arises whether judges are abusing this right, given that there are no clear rules by which these standbys are determined, as well as possible manipulations in the distribution of cases, if several of the same judges are constantly on standby.
"The answers to these questions should be provided by the judicial inspection of the Ministry of Justice, which is responsible for inspecting the implementation of the Court Rules of Procedure in the area of court administration," the director of the Human Rights Action (HRA) told CIN-CG. Tea Gorjanc Prelevic.
It clarifies that court administration includes the internal organization of work in the court, for which the court president is responsible.
"According to the Law on Courts, inspection supervision is carried out by the Minister of Justice in accordance with the annual supervision plan and in response to complaints and petitions from citizens related to court administration affairs," says Gorjanc Prelević.
According to the Court Rules of Procedure, "the president of the court shall assign the investigating judge and officials and employees who will be on standby to come to the court and shall determine the readiness of other judges, officials and employees to perform urgent tasks."
The HRA Director emphasizes that there is no regulation on what is considered "urgent work", but in practice these are the work of the investigating judge in criminal proceedings and other judges related to the consideration of appeals in that procedure.
The Minister of Justice, he reminds, can also order extraordinary inspection supervision, at the proposal of the President of the Supreme Court, the President of the immediately higher court, or the President of the Judicial Council.
"Such a need, for the readiness to last non-stop, should be documented, the court records the additional hours, there is a written record of everything, there are minutes of deliberations, etc., so that the judicial inspection can check whether there was a basis for all that readiness," she says.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) did not respond to CIN-CG's questions about whether they monitor the work of courts in terms of judges' standby schedules, whether there is a possibility of manipulation in the distribution of cases, if several of the same judges are constantly on standby without precise guidelines, and whether they conduct analyses on how the current standby system affects the efficiency of courts and the legal security of citizens.
Several sources from the judiciary confirmed to CIN-CG that some judges apparently saw these standbys as a source of additional income, meaning that they would receive more in salary per month, without essentially doing anything.
The amount that will be paid for standby is calculated depending on the length of service, coefficient, and past work, and for example, for a basic court judge with 24 years of service, 379 hours of standby is about 700 euros. Which means that judges who consistently reported over 500 hours of standby per month could actually receive almost double their salary.
The Judicial Council is now working on guidelines, but claims there are no abuses
The SS claims that this is not a case of abuse or inefficiency, but they are currently working on developing guidelines.
"The Judicial Council is actively working on the development of Guidelines for compiling a monthly standby schedule and records of work longer than full-time hours, the adoption and publication of which is expected in the very near future," the Judicial Council points out.
They clarify that the monthly standby schedule is the responsibility of the court president, not the SS.
"Court presidents are responsible for the proper and timely operation of the court and are obliged to do so in a proper and lawful manner. In the previous period, there were suspicions that this was being done illegally in a certain number of courts, but after the SDT reviewed such suspicions, the criminal charges that had been filed were dismissed, because it was determined that there were no irregularities or illegalities," the SS's response states.
However, according to CIN-CG, these criminal charges relate only to the Basic Court in Podgorica. Civil judges, who normally receive a salary of around 1.300 euros, filed criminal charges suspecting illegality, but the prosecutor's office determined that everything was in order in that court.
The SS assesses that it is clear why a situation in which individual judges of smaller courts, simply because they are the only judges in that court on standby for the entire month, or share their standby with one or two colleagues, can create a perception of inequality.
"However, this is not a consequence of anyone's desire for individuals to achieve additional financial benefit, but rather a given of the current moment in the organizational network of Montenegrin courts and the general disinterest of lawyers in judicial positions, especially those in smaller towns in Montenegro," the SS emphasizes.
CIN-CG previously wrote that judges have taken millions of euros in recent years in official fees and lawsuits they filed for, among other things, unpaid standby leave, and were recently promised a 30 percent salary increase.
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