A suspended sentence and a 200 euro fine - this was awarded by the Basic Court in Bijelo Polje in October 2024 to a man who used a work machine to collect river sediment worth 1.000 euros from the Lim River bed during the summer.
This is the only verdict by the Montenegrin judiciary in the last almost three years for unauthorized exploitation of river sediment. This criminal offense is punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine.
The Judicial Council's records on environmental crime, from the beginning of 2020 to the middle of this year, contain a total of 815 final judgments. As many as 470 are for illegal construction, and 249 for forest theft, which means that these two offenses together account for about 88 percent of all judgments under Chapter 25 of the Criminal Code, which deals with criminal offenses related to environmental protection and spatial planning.
At the same time, the scale of ecological devastation caused by illegal gravel extraction from riverbeds in Montenegro has reached incredible proportions - to the point where it has almost endangered the drinking water of half the population.
In June of this year, the Minister of Ecology Damjan Ćulafić He said that the yield of the “Bolje sestre” water source, which supplies water to the entire Montenegrin coast, has been reduced from 2.090 liters per second in 2010 to 288 liters per second, primarily due to long-term illegal exploitation of gravel from the Morača riverbed.
"Obviously, the system is not yet ready to respond to pronounced examples of eco-crime," he says. Aleksandar Perovic, executive director of the environmental movement “Ozon”.
He warns that more serious crimes, such as environmental pollution, illegal waste disposal, burning tires, deliberately starting fires, and poaching, generally do not result in prison sentences.
Environmental activist Aleksandar Dragićević says that the low number of convictions "sends a message that these crimes are not taken seriously enough to allow proceedings to be conducted efficiently and within reasonable time limits."
"This way, the important deterrent effect is missing, as well as the message to the public that institutions are functioning and that environmental crime will not be tolerated in Montenegro," says Dragićević.
ONLY A FEW COURT PROCEEDINGS
Of the 815 verdicts, according to data obtained from the Judicial Council based on a request for free access to information, only 13 were issued for acts such as environmental pollution, destruction of protected natural assets, or deforestation.
Of the seven convictions for environmental crimes, five were suspended sentences and two were community service.
None of the 815 verdicts were issued for acts such as environmental pollution with waste, ozone layer damage, operation of facilities and plants that pollute the environment, or export and import of hazardous substances.
In addition to the verdict at the beginning of the article, two more suspended sentences for unauthorized gravel exploitation have been issued since 2020, but treated as the criminal offense of theft and petty theft. Both sentences were also pronounced in the Basic Court in Bijelo Polje.
Only in the amendments to the Criminal Code, at the end of 2023, was the criminal offense of unauthorized exploitation of river sediment introduced.
However, even before then, there was a way for this act to be prosecuted in some cases as a much more serious crime than theft - theft of protected cultural property, for which a sentence of one to six years is provided, or five to fifteen years for a more serious form of the act.
CIN-CG previously wrote that there were several other symbolic penalties for illegal gravel exploitation, two fines and one suspended sentence, but also treated as minor criminal offenses.
In the Basic Court in Plav, a man who felled several hundred trees to widen a trail in the Prokletije National Park was given a suspended sentence. The court assessed that the act of environmental damage was committed through negligence, and provided for a fine or imprisonment of up to one year. The law provides for a prison sentence of up to three years for the basic form of this offense.
In the Danilovgrad Basic Court, a man was also given a suspended sentence for two criminal offenses - illegal construction and forest destruction. Only forest destruction is punishable by a fine and up to three years in prison.
Community service was ordered in two cases of destruction of natural monuments. In one case, the defendant - a repeat offender - carved initials into a stone in the Đalovića Cave, and in the other, a man broke cave jewelry in the Ledena Cave, within the Durmitor National Park, with his foot.
The criminal offense of destruction and damage to protected natural assets is punishable by imprisonment of three months to five years.
Acquittal verdicts for environmental pollution
The only two proceedings conducted for the criminal offense of "environmental pollution" ended in an acquittal and a dismissal.
Both relate to wastewater discharges - one from a factory in Bijelo Polje, the other from a landfill in Pljevlja.
The Basic Court in Bijelo Polje acquitted those responsible for the factories "Mesopromet Franca" and "Milka MDK" of charges that they discharged wastewater and polluted the Lim River in 2019, causing a large fish kill in the river and thus causing damage of over 70.000 euros.
The Basic Court in Pljevlja acquitted the Electric Power Company of Montenegro and four managers of the Pljevlja Thermal Power Plant, after the prosecutor dropped the charges for the death of a large number of fish in the Vezišnica and Ćehotina rivers. The defendants were also charged with failing to take environmental protection measures.
In both cases, the experts stated that samples of polluted water were not taken adequately and in accordance with standards, and that the cause of the fish death cannot be determined with certainty, because the cumulative impact of other pollutants cannot be ruled out.
The Chinese company CRBC, which was building a highway in Montenegro, and its director, who the prosecution had charged with the destruction and damage of a protected natural asset, were also acquitted. They were accused of deepening the riverbed of the protected river during the regulation of the Tara River bed, contrary to the Water Act and without consent. The Kolašin Basic Court concluded that there was no evidence for these charges, referring, among other things, to the expert opinion that “there was a minor disruption of local biodiversity, but that there were no major consequences for biodiversity and water quality due to the activities in question.”
In one verdict for environmental damage, the court concluded that a man's building on rented land and renting out deck chairs was not a criminal offense.
A forest destruction case, for which a multiple returnee was accused of committing criminal offenses, has expired because the indictment was filed late.
The Supreme Court says that numerous acts in this area have a complex evidentiary structure, which often involves expert assessments and proving a cause-and-effect relationship between the act and the harmful consequences for the environment, human health, and flora and fauna.
They state that the fact that the number of convictions for environmental crimes is very low or non-existent shows that environmental crime must be viewed through the work of all institutions responsible for its detection, proof, prosecution and trial.
"Environmental protection represents a value of special public interest and constitutional significance. Therefore, it is important that the criminal legal response to the most serious forms of environmental harm is effective and contributes to achieving the purpose of punishment, including general and special prevention," the Supreme Court said.
LIMITATIONS AND CASES UNDER INVESTIGATION
For years, the environmental inspection has filed criminal charges against the company "Weg Kolektor", which owns two pools of toxic red mud, waste from the former Podgorica Aluminum Plant.
Due to the high alkaline content, the landfill is classified as hazardous waste. The irrigation system that was supposed to keep the pools moist has not been working for years, and the inspection registered that when the wind blows, red dust from the dry surfaces of the pools falls on the surrounding villages and saturates the property of the locals.
The inspection also notes that the owner claims that he does not have the financial means to provide water for irrigation.
The case ended without charges, because the prosecution determined that the statute of limitations had expired, and in January of this year, the Government of Montenegro announced that it would return the pools to state ownership, in order to resolve the problem itself.
It is similar in Pljevlja, where the inspection issued a decision prohibiting the public boiler house "Grijanje" from producing and delivering heat energy until emissions of particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and arsenic are reduced to the prescribed limits.
However, the deadline for implementing the measure was extended, and new measurements from 2025 again showed exceedances, while the inspector noted in an official note that the boiler plant was still in operation. The prosecutor's office opened a case, but it is still under investigation.
The same is true of the demolition of the “December 19” anti-hail rocket factory, in the construction of which large quantities of asbestos were used. The plant was located near a playground, an elementary school and two kindergartens, and the inspection determined that the building, which had asbestos roofs, was demolished without a clear waste disposal plan. The case was also formed during the reconnaissance phase.
On the coast, at the initiative of the Public Company for Coastal Zone Management, the environmental inspection also noted the illegal filling of stone and sand material and the formation of a bathing area measuring approximately 150 by four meters, in the buffer zone of the Kotor UNESCO site. In this case, too, the case is still under investigation.
The Karuč case, or rather the case of two floating bungalows on Lake Skadar, did not end up as an environmental crime either.
The Basic State Prosecutor's Office in Cetinje has filed an indictment, but not for an act against the environment, but for prolonged autocratic rule.
Commenting on the large number of cases that remain under investigation in prosecutors' offices, Perović believes that such a practice can reasonably be interpreted as a way to formally register the problem, but not solve it.
"The absence of serious penalties actually acts as an incentive for those who engage in ecocrime," he warns, adding that often the same organized groups repeat the same crimes in the same locations.
Dragićević says that many times in the field they found actions that, according to the Criminal Code of Montenegro, represented characteristics of criminal offenses in the field of environmental crime, but that the prosecution concluded that there were no elements of a criminal offense.
"Such practices must stop if we really want to seriously and systematically combat environmental crime in Montenegro," he says.
FORMING AN OPERATIONAL TEAM
In September 2025, an Operational Team for Combating Environmental Crime was formed under the Supreme State Prosecutor's Office. The team claims that in just a few months of work, they have improved institutional coordination and achieved "measurable results", primarily in cases of illegal gravel exploitation and the removal of floating objects on Lake Skadar.
The Team's report for the first quarter of 2026 states that cases were opened against 118 persons, that the proceedings for 88 persons were in the investigation phase, that indictments were filed against 16 persons, while there were no financial investigations.
However, in their response, they state that only three meetings have been held since its establishment and that the system chronically suffers from a lack of inspectors, police officers, and technical conditions.
When it comes to one of the bigger problems - unauthorized exploitation of river sediment - the Basic State Prosecutor's Office in Podgorica has filed three indictments for gravel extraction in the Podgorica and Zeta areas. However, the prosecutor's office admits that no separate case has been filed for direct damage caused to the "Bolje sestre" water source.
The EU Delegation to Montenegro says that the country continues to make progress under Chapter 27, which deals with the environment and climate change, and that it has taken steps to strengthen the system, including a specialized police unit to combat environmental crime, an operational coordination team, training for prosecutors and judges, and further alignment with European rules.
However, the message from Brussels is clear: the judiciary's response to cases such as illegal gravel exploitation, pollution, waste and works in protected areas is an important part of the overall assessment of Montenegro's readiness to close this chapter, because the EU in this area measures not only adopted laws, but also the concrete results of their implementation.
The Delegation explains that the entire chain of law enforcement is important to Brussels, from inspections and police to prosecutors and courts, and that the large number of cases that remain under investigation or do not receive a final conclusion may indicate problems in capacity, coordination and operational efficiency.
The Environmental Protection Agency, the institution that is supposed to have an overview of the extent of environmental damage, the method of its recording, reports to the police, inspection and prosecutor's offices, as well as data on whether the state has collected damage, ordered remediation or restoration to the original state, did not respond to CIN Montenegro's questions.
Center for Investigative Journalism of Montenegro
This text was created as part of the MOST - Media Organisations for Stronger Transnational Journalism project, a journalism partnership funded by the Creative Europe programme, which supports independent media outlets specializing in international reporting.
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