All prosecutors who were evaluated last year were rated with the best rating. Only one from the basic state prosecutor's office was subject to disciplinary action. And this is due to failure to submit the property certificate to the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption. Two violations of the Code of Ethics were found, due to mutual relations between employees. These are the statements from the Report on the work of the Prosecutorial Council (TS) and the State Prosecutor's Office for 2021.
Center for Investigative Journalism of Montenegro (CIN-CG) and the Center for Civil Liberties (CEGAS) previously announced that in five years, from 2016 to 2020, in a total of 25 initiated procedures for violations of the Code of Ethics in prosecutor's offices, only four cases were found to have been violated. In the same period, disciplinary responsibility was determined only in nine cases, and six fines were issued for failure to declare assets.
The Report does not contain detailed information on the inspections carried out in the prosecutor's offices. It is stated, however, that in most prosecutor's offices there is not the required number of prosecutors, while in some prosecutor's offices managers are acting. A big problem is also the lack of spatial capacity, so, as it is pointed out, confiscated narcotics are also kept in the offices of the Higher State Prosecutor's Office in Podgorica.
"There is no adequate space for the storage of seized items, especially narcotic drugs and weapons, but a larger quantity of weapons and a larger quantity of narcotic drugs are placed in rooms intended for taking actions in the investigation, and smaller quantities of narcotic drugs are placed in employees' offices", the report says.
There is no space, but that's why the prosecutors are doing a great job. According to the Report for 2021, the Commission evaluated eight state prosecutors. They all received excellent marks. TS has not yet changed the rules for evaluating prosecutors and heads of prosecution offices, which, according to the Report, they are planning for this year.
CIN-CG and CEGAS previously wrote that, in the period from 2016 to 2021, out of 116 prosecutors working in the basic, higher and Special Prosecutor's Office, as many as 115 of them were rated excellent.
That not all prosecutors are flawless in their work is best shown by their results, as well as the many years of warnings from Brussels that the rule of law is the biggest obstacle to Montenegro's accession to the European Union (EU).
"The results of the reforms are still limited, especially the balance of the achieved results in the area of accountability in the judiciary," the European Commission (EC) Report for 2021 points out.
EC has repeatedly indicated in its reports that the decisions of the Prosecutor's Council are not adequately explained, and that it should be ensured that all cases indicating disciplinary or ethical responsibility are prosecuted.
No responsibility for (non)work
According to the Report for 2021, the Commission for the Code of Ethics of State Prosecutors was supposed to decide on ten cases. However, only five were solved.
Last year, the Disciplinary Council decided on only two cases. One was found to be a more serious disciplinary offense (failure to provide information on assets and income) and a fine was imposed. In the second case it decided on, the proceedings were suspended, because the disciplinary prosecutor dropped the charges before the end of the hearing. Therefore, there was no determination of responsibility related to the performance of the prosecutorial function and handling of specific cases.
The report for 2021 does not bring anything new in terms of the responsibility of prosecutors, the legal adviser of the Action for Human Rights (HRA) points out for CIN-CG Marija Vesković.
"There are no detailed data, no explanations, only numbers, which do not tell citizens anything," concludes Vesković.
The Commission for the Code of Ethics made opinions based solely on the position of the prosecutor against whom the complaint was filed and on the basis of an inspection of the files. "In no case was the applicant heard, although the complaints mostly related to the prosecutor's treatment of the applicant," Vesković emphasized.
The commission did not submit any proposal for determining disciplinary responsibility, although in two cases where it found a violation of the Code, there were grounds to do so, Vesković assesses.
For the previous two years, none of the seven accepted complaints about the legality of the prosecutors' work, which indicated a serious violation of the law, led to the initiation of a disciplinary procedure or a procedure for violation of the Code of Ethics. Vesković points out that the well-founded complaints about the work of the prosecutors did not have any sanction. The prosecutors were only told how to correct the omission. The HRA emphasizes that many more complaints had to be accepted, especially with regard to the actions of state prosecutors following torture reports.
There is no data on applications rejected due to time-barredness
Vesković also points out that the Council was presented with cases that indicated serious doubts about the prosecutors' work. However, there was no initiative of the TS to check all those cases in detail and initiate proceedings. The Prosecutor's Council decided on complaints in an untimely and uneven manner.
"It is especially worrisome that last year the practice of checking the reasons for the statute of limitations of the criminal prosecution was not adopted last year, i.e. whether it was due to the prosecutor's unprofessional or negligent work," she stated.
The report for 2021 does not even show the number of dismissed criminal charges due to the statute of limitations for prosecution. These data were always shown in earlier years. The HRA warns that previous reports on the work of the state prosecutor's office show a high percentage of rejected criminal charges due to the statute of limitations of criminal prosecution, from 70 to even 98 percent, as many as there were in 2018.
Gazivoda: We didn't have time for too many changes
TS in its new composition has been working at full capacity since the beginning of this year, and it held its first session in January of this year.
Member of TS Siniša Gazivoda points out that the Draft Report was submitted to the Council only in mid-March, and as the legal deadline for submitting the Report to the Assembly is March 31, it was not possible to intervene any further.
"In that short period of time, we managed to add information related to the duration of financial investigations, with individual data for the Special State Prosecutor's Office and the Higher State Prosecutor's Office, and the limitations of those prosecutors' offices when it comes to financial investigation procedures. The report was supplemented with certain information about complaints about the work of prosecutors and heads of state prosecutions, information about cooperation with EUROJUST, information about secret surveillance measures, the exemption of prosecutors," says Gazivoda.
Gazivoda also emphasizes that the Report covers the period in which this TS convocation was not even constituted, and that the working group formed in the prosecution prepared the report adhering to the form and content of earlier reports.
He adds that the TS Commission for normative activity will soon begin work on the preparation of a draft of the new methodology, so that the reports reflect the actual situation in the prosecution system of Montenegro.
Supervising the Special Secret?
The Report also states that the supervision of the work of the Higher State Prosecutor's Office in Podgorica was carried out at the beginning of December, and the necessity of launching financial investigations in the reconnaissance phase or during the criminal investigation was determined. The Report also highlights the need to conduct financial investigations in the Bjelo Polje Higher State Prosecutor's Office. There is no information about the supervision of the Special State Prosecutor's Office in the Report, except that it started on December 27, 2021. CIN-CG and CEGAS also recently wrote about the fact that internal control has not been carried out for almost five years in most prosecution offices.
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