The International Arbitration Tribunal based in Frankfurt made a decision by which it accepted the request of the company WTE from Essen (FR Germany), thereby obliging the Municipality of Budva to pay 40 million euros as a guarantee for the construction of a wastewater treatment plant in Bečići. The Municipality claims that they are continuing the legal battle and repeat that it is a falsified guarantee from 2010.
"Vijesti" previously announced that the guarantee contained a facsimile of the former mayor of Budva, the now deceased Rajko Kuljača, who claimed that he did not sign it.
"The decision was submitted to the legal team of the municipality on October 10.10.2023, 2022. in the late evening hours, and we are obliged to note that it was brought after multiple and months-long delays, contrary to the practice of international arbitration. In the previous few days, the legal team analyzed and managed to review the decision and prepare a set of responses to this unprecedented attempt to legalize corruption. Therefore, the disputed decision was made by three people who clearly acted biased in favor of WTE, and in this regard, we note that from June XNUMX, the procedure at the request of the municipality before the German regular court in terms of the exemption of all three members of the arbitration tribunal due to obvious bias in favor of WTE. That exemption procedure is still ongoing. It turns out that we were right when we started the mentioned procedure to disqualify the arbitrators who made the disputed verdict in connection with the forged guarantee", the Municipality's announcement reads.
It is added that "the tribunal completely ignored the corrupt nature of the entire "arrangement" with WTE, as evidenced by numerous final criminal verdicts pronounced before the High Court in Podgorica".
"Also, the fact that in the case of the disputed guarantee is a notorious forgery (about which there is an undisputed and undisputed opinion of a graphologist expert) was ignored, about which the SDT was informed in detail in 2020, i.e. 2021, in the form of a criminal report and several amendments, and let's add that there is communication from the prosecutor's offices of several countries about this forgery", the Municipality states.
However, as they add, in the interest of the public and, above all, citizens, we are obliged to emphasize that there are legal remedies against this and similar decisions before the courts in the Federal Republic of Germany, as well as before the courts in Montenegro.
"On all steps, activities, both procedural and material, the municipality informed the Special State Prosecutor's Office in an up-to-date and timely manner, which was also informed of the disputed arbitration decision. We hope that the SDT, after the above disputed decision, will finally bring to the hearing all persons who have reasonable suspicion that they handed over this falsified "guarantee" to the representatives of the WTE company. Let's add what is common knowledge, namely that the disputed guarantee was never considered by the Budva Municipal Assembly, which is mandatory by law, but rather represents a private arrangement of persons who move freely without consequences on the one hand and representatives of WTE on the other. Due to the nature of the procedure, we cannot announce more than the above at this moment, but we would like to point out that this issue will be discussed at three addresses, namely before the regular state court in Germany, the courts of Montenegro, but also before the SDT, taking into account all the materials that have been submitted to that prosecutor's office so far," the announcement concludes.
The payment of the guarantee would bring Budva into financial collapse because 40 million euros is the same as the annual budget of the tourism metropolis.
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