The decision of the International Arbitration Tribunal based in Frankfurt becomes enforceable on October 23, when the German-Austrian concern WTE/EVN can block the account of the Municipality of Budva and start collecting 40 million euros, which is the biggest corruption scandal of an organized criminal group headed by the fugitive Svetozar Marović came to pay.
This was unofficially confirmed by "Vijesti" in the Municipality.
The President of the Municipal Assembly, Nikola Jovanović, who informally governs the Municipality after the arrest of Mayor Milo Božović, did not respond to "Vijesti" messages.
The tribunal accepted the request of the German company from Essen, which initiated the dispute after it left the waste water treatment plant in Bečići in January 2020, to be given the guarantee issued to them by the Municipality of Budva in April 2010, on which there is a facsimile of the then mayor. , the now deceased Rajko Kuljača, pays 40 million euros.
"Vijesti" was unofficially told that the Municipality will initiate a procedure before the enforcement court in order to prevent the Municipality's account from being blocked as early as Monday in the largest block in the history of the tourism metropolis. Proceedings before the courts in Montenegro are also announced.
However, one of the solutions, as it was said, is for the Municipality to take a loan and prevent the blocking of the functioning of the city and pay the requested amount. Budva's annual budget is around 47 million euros, so blocking the account would paralyze the city. There are more than 13 million euros in the account, and the Municipality could immediately pay off a third of the debt.
The Government of Montenegro will also be invited to help.
Since June 2021, the municipality of Budva has been represented by a legal team, which was appointed at the proposal of the then mayor of Budva Marko Carević, lawyers Andreas Daxberger, Partner at DLA Piper Weiss-Tessbach Rechtsanwalte GmbH and Alexander Schultmeyer Counsel at DLA Piper Weiss-Tessbach Rechtsanwalte GmbH from Austria, as and lawyers Dušan Radosavljević and Miroje Jovanović from Serbia.
The municipality based its defense in Frankfurt on the fact that the guarantee was a simple forgery.
It is, as the Municipality claims, a disputed guarantee from 2010 that does not have the consent of the Budva Municipal Court, and because of which Tsarević filed a criminal complaint against Kuljaca and several unknown persons who participated in that case. Immediately after the accusations, Kuljača denied that he had signed the disputed guarantee, and announced that he had in no way participated in its adoption.
The Special Prosecutor's Office, headed by Milivoje Katnić at the time, rejected the report due to the death of the reported person, as well as against unknown persons, because, as stated, there is no reasonable suspicion that any person has committed criminal acts that are being prosecuted ex officio.
At the end of 2019, the foreign company collected a state guarantee of 29,3 million euros from the Government of Duško Marković, in order to leave the facility to the Municipality in a catastrophic technical condition already in January 2020.
She subsequently filed another lawsuit at the International Court of Justice in Geneva, where they are demanding another 31,9 million euros.
As announced the day before yesterday from the Municipality, the decision was delivered on October 10, 2023, late in the evening.
"In the past 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 persons who clearly acted with a bias in favor of WTE. In this regard, we note that from June 2022, the procedure at the request of the municipality before the German regular court in terms of the exclusion of all three members of the arbitration tribunal due to obvious bias in favor of WTE", the Municipality announced.
That exemption procedure, as they state, is still ongoing.
"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 the form of a criminal report and several amendments in 2020, that is, in 2021. and let's add that there is communication from the prosecutor's offices of several countries about this forgery", the Municipality states.
That question, as they state, will be "discussed at three addresses, namely before the regular state court in Germany, the courts of Montenegro, but also before the SDT, bearing in mind all the materials that have been submitted to that prosecution until now.
"On all steps, activities, both procedural and material, the municipality informed the Special State Prosecutor's Office promptly and in a 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 are suspected of having handed over this falsified "guarantee" to the representatives of the WTE company. Let's add what is generally known - 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 WTE representatives on the other.
The waste water treatment plant in the Vještice neighborhood of Bečići, which was ceremonially opened seven and a half years ago by the then Prime Minister Milo Đukanović, and attended by the head of the Budva criminal group Svetozar Marović, is one of the municipality's largest infrastructure projects, but also the largest, as yet unexplored , the corruption affair of the Budva criminal group.
The municipality of Budva bases its defense before the international tribunal on the claim that it is a corruption case, in which the executive director of "WTE waste water" Ginter Faust himself participated, who admitted before the Special Prosecutor's Office and signed a plea agreement that he inflated the invoices during the construction of the plant, in order to return three million euros of personal debt incurred by Marović.
Also, the tribunal was presented with the findings of Dr. Jože Duhovnik, an expert, who determined that the value of the performed works on the construction of the plant of 41,4 million euros, as reported by the German company, should be reduced by an overestimated 12,6 million euros. Also, the financial expert Ilinka Vuković, who was hired by the Budva municipality, found other disputed invoices whose amounts exceed 3,5 million euros, while the maintenance of the plant during five and a half years was invoiced 500 to 700 thousand euros per year more than the real value.
Because of the guarantee, he owes the state almost 30 million euros
The municipality of Budva is also facing another financial blockade, because it is obliged to return 29.250.000 euros to the state, i.e. the Ministry of Finance, the amount of money collected at the end of 2019 by activating the state guarantee by the German-Austrian concern WTE/EVN, which then left the plant for wastewater treatment in the Vještice settlement in Bečići.
This is written in the judgment of the Basic Court of Kotor, against which the Municipality has already filed an appeal.
It is a process initiated against the Municipality by the Ministry, represented by the Protector of Property and Legal Interests of Montenegro.
"The claim is approved, so the Municipality undertakes to compensate the State of Montenegro - the Ministry of Finance in the amount of EUR 29.250.000 as a payment guarantee with statutory default interest from December 27, 2019, as well as to reimburse the Ministry of Finance for the costs of the commission paid to the Central Bank of Montenegro Above in the amount of EUR 58.500 with statutory default interest," the judgment reads, and it is emphasized that the deadline is eight days from the day the judgment becomes final under the threat of enforcement.
Also, according to the verdict, the Municipality is obliged to pay another 29.700 euros to the State for the costs of the procedure.
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