Millions were given on their word, then hung: The government was too trusting when it distributed affordable apartments and loans

The government did not secure itself in any way, not even with administrative bans, when it provided public officials and civil servants with thousands of euros in favorable loans and apartments for little money, which is why it is now having difficulty collecting claims from more than 200 people it has housed.

It seems that the courts are not protecting the state treasury either - since the beginning of April, a final verdict has been in effect, according to which the employee of the Parliament of Montenegro did not violate the regulations and will not suffer consequences, even though she has not paid the installment of about thirty euros for a loan on favorable terms in the amount of almost 10.000 for years.

Therefore, the Office of the Protector of Property and Legal Interests (ZIPI) requested the Constitutional Court, through the institute of constitutional appeal, to annul that verdict.

The reasons for filing the constitutional appeal, according to the document that "Vijesti" has access to, are the violation of the right to a fair trial - primarily the right to a reasoned court decision, and then the obviously arbitrary application of substantive law from Article 32 of the Constitution of Montenegro, Article 6 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, as well as the violation of the right to property from Article 58 of the Constitution of Montenegro.

The State Property Administration recently confirmed to "Vijesti" that more than 200 former officials and civil servants are not repaying their loan installments regularly or have not paid the agreed amount for the purchase of an apartment on favorable terms.

These are 179 loans on favorable terms in amounts ranging from 15.000 to 40.000 euros, as well as 25 people who are not paying their obligations under the contract for the purchase of an apartment on favorable terms. These contracts were signed in the period from 2004 to 2020.

The installment for a Montenegrin Parliament employee to repay a loan of nearly 10.000 euros was 31,53 euros. She did not pay those installments until she received a lawsuit from the state, when she paid the debt of about 2.000 euros.

The ZIPI office recently told the editorial staff that they had received documentation from the Administration that these cases had been assigned priority treatment, but that "the plan is to initiate debt collection procedures, but to first warn the beneficiaries to settle the amount owed voluntarily."

Do courts protect the privileged or justice?

The constitutional appeal states that the judgment of the Podgorica Basic Court of January 30 last year rejected the state's claim, which requested that the defendant be obliged to return the amount of 7.838,39 euros paid under the contract of June 6, 2018, with statutory interest.

The ruling, available on the Basic Court website, states that the employee entered into a loan agreement with the state for nearly 10.000 euros in 2018, and that she was supposed to repay 2.086, in installments of 31,53 euros over the next five years (until June 6, 2023).

Since the employee did not pay her debts, the state sued her, and she only paid her debts after receiving the lawsuit.

This was not a problem for the Basic Court, and neither was it for the Higher Court in Podgorica, which upheld the verdict in early April this year.

"The contested decisions violated the constitutional complainant's right to a fair trial under Article 32 of the Constitution of Montenegro and Article 6 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (hereinafter: the European Convention) and the right to property under Article 58 of the Constitution of Montenegro and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the European Convention. In this regard, the constitutional complainant states that the contested decisions primarily do not contain valid reasons, despite the constitutional complainant's indication that by filing the lawsuit with the defendant as the beneficiary, the loan repayment agreement of June 6, 2018 was terminated," states the constitutional complaint of ZIPI, which "Vijesti" has access to.

The institution, headed by Bojana Cirovic, emphasizes that this “decisive fact was pointed out by the plaintiff's legal representative in the lawsuit requesting the return of funds and ultimately in the appeal against the judgment of the Basic Court in Podgorica P.br. 3132/23 of 30.1.2024”.

"The plaintiff's legal representative specifically pointed out that the lawsuit is considered a statement of termination of the contract, and that the conditions for termination without leaving a subsequent deadline for fulfilling the obligation have been met, since the defendant, starting from June 6, 2018, as the date of conclusion of the contract, until the date of filing the lawsuit, did not pay a single monthly annuity in the manner prescribed by the provision of Article 3 of the contract in question. For the aforementioned reason, the regular courts arbitrarily applied substantive law when they rejected the claim as unfounded, finding that the plaintiff is entitled to the refund of the amount that the defendant was obliged to return pursuant to the concluded contract, in this case the amount of 2.086,61 euros," the constitutional complaint states.

It is alleged that the regular courts, and in particular the Basic Court in Podgorica, failed to provide valid reasons for the key argument of the state of Montenegro as the plaintiff - by filing the lawsuit, the loan repayment agreement in question was terminated, and the consequence of the termination was the return of the amount given, and not the amount that the defendant in the proceedings, as the user, was obliged to return.

And to the judges, euros and squares

"Vijesti" has written several times over the years about apartments and tens of thousands of loans for housing needs, which the Government distributed to officials and "meritorious" employees for little money.

Among them are a large number of judges and prosecutors, including several former judges of the Constitutional Court.

After the change of government in August 2020, the newly formed National High-Level Anti-Corruption Council formed an expert team that tried to track down who received what and how much money to address the housing issue.

The then head of the expert team Vanja Ćalović Marković in April 2021, she warned that the government's archive on the allocation of apartments and housing loans on preferential terms had been "largely destroyed."

She then pointed out that from 2011 to 2021, at least 580 people who worked in state bodies received this type of assistance from the state treasury, and that at least 175 of them held public positions.

Although the expert team was unable to find all the documentation at the time, they calculated that during that decade alone, at least 25 million euros were distributed to resolve housing issues, and around 20.000 square meters of housing space were also allocated.

Two-bedroom apartments for several thousand euros or five-figure loans that are repaid in installments of around thirty euros are the result of the 2014 Decision on the method and criteria for resolving the housing needs of officials, signed by the then Prime Minister. Milo Djukanovic.

For example, according to officially published data at the time, at the beginning of 2018, the Government approved several housing loans to employees and officials of certain departments, worth between 20.000 and 40.000 euros and with monthly installments ranging from 30,3 to 97,22 euros.

This is just one of the benefits, along with the loan being repaid in installments for up to 20 years and a reduction in the loan amount of five percent for each full year of service and the age of the building of at least three percent, and up to a maximum of 80 percent of its amount.

Judge of the Specialized Department of the Higher Court in Podgorica Vesna Kovačević recently, in a first-instance verdict, acquitted all defendants in the “Apartments” case.

An indictment was filed against the following government officials: Predrag Bošković, Budimir the apprentice, Suad Numanovića, Sanje Vlahovic, Ivan Brajović, Drazen Miličković, Damir Šehović, Dragice Sekulić, Osman Nurković, Suzana Pribilović, Jelena Radonjic i Aleksandar Jovićević, due to the existence of reasonable suspicion that in the period from 2016 to 2020, as members of the Housing Commission of the Government of Montenegro, they, as co-perpetrators, committed the extended criminal offense of abuse of official position, which is punishable by a prison sentence of two to 12 years.

They were accused of having, contrary to the Decision on the method and criteria for resolving the housing needs of officials, according to which a loan for improving housing conditions could not exceed 15.000 euros, awarded amounts between 17.500 and 40.000 euros to more than 100 officials and their associates, thus obtaining benefits for them and causing damage to the Montenegrin budget of 2.604,740,59 euros.

In her explanation of the acquittal, Kovačević said that the evidence submitted as photocopies was inadmissible to the court. She said that the photocopies were uncertified.