The Higher Court in Podgorica annulled the verdict by which the Municipality of Budva had to reimburse the Government at least 29,3 million euros paid under the activated guarantee to the German WTE. The higher court sent the case back to the Kotor court and ordered a new procedure, Portal RTCG reports.
According to the original verdict, the Municipality of Budva was obliged to return almost 30 million euros to the State of Montenegro, i.e. the Ministry of Finance, which was collected five years ago by the activation of the state guarantee by the German-Austrian concern WTE/EVN, which then abandoned the waste water treatment plant in Bečići. Vještice settlement.
However, after the appeal of the lawyer Vladan Bojić, representative of the Municipality of Budva, that will not happen, at least for now.
Bojić tells Portal RTCG that this decision of the High Court is good news for the citizens of Budva.
"A blockade of over 30 million euros was prevented. The government's payment in December 2019 from a completely corrupt legal deal with WTE and a member of the organized criminal group Gunter Faust was and is harmful and legally inadmissible," announced Bojić.
He said that if the appeal was not accepted, the damage would be enormous, and that interest from 2019 should be included in the final figure.
"It should be emphasized that the Commercial Court, although it is not really competent, blocked the account of the Municipality of Budva with a temporary measure for that amount in May 2020, until October 2020, when our complaint about lack of jurisdiction was accepted and then canceled its own decision on the temporary measure, announced non-competent and transferred the case to the factually and locally competent Basic Court in Kotor. The team unblocked the account of the Municipality of Budva," says Bojić.
The Ministry of Finance claimed otherwise, clarifying that the lawsuit demanded that the Municipality compensate the state for 29,3 million euros paid to WTE engaged in the waste water project based on the contract they concluded with this company in 2009.
The Kotor Renovation Court ruled earlier that the Municipality of Budva is obliged to pay the government millions that were paid at the end of 2019 in the name of the state guarantee to the German-Austrian concern WTE/EVN in the name of the construction of a wastewater treatment plant in Bečići.
"After the Austrian-German company WTE, contrary to contracts and agreements, unilaterally abandoned the Wastewater Treatment Plant in Bečići, it submitted a falsified guarantee of 66 million to the Municipality of Budva and 29,5 million to the Government of Montenegro. We refused to pay. a corrupt deal in which the former director of the Faust company admitted and entered into a plea agreement for giving bribes in the amount of three million euros. The whole deal was designed and carried out in a criminally organized manner in order to pump 100 million from the budget of the citizens of Budva," he said. formerly the president of the Budva Municipality Assembly, Nikola Jovanović.
He told the media that despite numerous warnings from the Municipality, the Government made the payment.
At the end of 2019, the WTE company collected a state guarantee of 29,3 million euros from the Government of the then Prime Minister Duško Marković, in order to abandon the project already in January 2020. Today, there are two international arbitration proceedings.
Earlier, the Ministry announced that, after several years of negotiations between the Municipality and the company, on December 13.1, 2019, WTE submitted a protest for the payment of the guarantee to the Municipality and the Ministry of Finance.
"According to that request, the Ministry of Finance settled the obligations under that call on December 27.12.2019, XNUMX," said the department.
In accordance with the invitation and the provisions of the guarantee, the Government paid the guarantee in accordance with its assumed obligations.
"Regarding the question of the guarantee itself and the claim that it was a contract and that the guarantee could be contested in any way, those claims are untrue, incorrect, and legally unfounded. Non-fulfillment of obligations, without a legal basis, opens the door for the state to of international reference institutions as an institution that does not fulfill its obligations," said the Ministry.
This, as they claimed, would, on the one hand, lead to the state not being able to, or concluding credit arrangements on very expensive terms, and on the other hand, creating the possibility that all creditors, due to non-fulfillment of obligations, would declare their loans overdue and demand accelerated payment. of all arrangements.
"It is unnecessary to talk about the consequences of such a scenario, which would be catastrophic for the country," the Ministry said earlier.
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