Prime Minister Milojko Spajić requested that Interior Minister Danilo Šaranović fulfill his request to initiate proceedings to revoke the honorary citizenship of Kosovo businessman Naser Ramaj, as the prosecution suspects him of multi-million-dollar tax evasion.
This was confirmed to Television Vijesti by the relevant ministry.
The Center for Civic Education (CCE) is concerned that security checks are often missing in the process of granting honorary and economic citizenship.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) has initiated the procedure to revoke Ramaj's honorary citizenship, after Spajić recently requested it from the relevant Minister, Šaranović.
This follows from the Ministry of Interior's response that was delivered to Television Vijesti.
"By April 30 of this year, one ex officio procedure was initiated for the loss of Montenegrin citizenship by force of law, for a person who acquired Montenegrin citizenship by admission, in accordance with Article 12 of the Law on Montenegrin Citizenship, and based on the proposal of the Prime Minister and the opinion of the competent ministry," the Ministry of Internal Affairs said.
According to the prosecution's indictment, which was confirmed by the Kotor Basic Court, Ramaj is charged with participating in tax evasion of more than 2,2 million euros.
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The government of former Prime Minister Dritan Abazović granted him honorary citizenship in 2023, on the grounds that he was one of the investors in the "Porto Budva" complex, worth 80 million euros.
CCE indicates that this is a consequence of a systemically unregulated procedure for granting this citizenship.
"The interest in his admission to citizenship was not explained. Out of a total of several thousand citizenships, the security clearance procedure by the National Security Agency was carried out in the case of around 880 persons," said Damir Suljević from CCE.
Ramaj is just one of 313 people who have acquired honorary citizenship due to their special importance to the state, scientific, economic, cultural, economic, sports and other interests of Montenegro in the past 15 years.
The CCE does not dispute that there have been justified and positive examples of awarding honorary citizenships, but they also point to the opposite.
"Cases of granting citizenship to one of the priests of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Svetko Raketa, where no explanation was given of Montenegro's interest in granting that person citizenship, then we had the case of citizenship of workers who were engaged under a service contract in one of the ministries. We had cases where these citizenships were granted due to sports interest, and that sports interest is not visible," said Suljević.
And many more economic passports were issued in exchange for investments – as many as 2.824, from 2019 to the end of April this year.
After the European Union warned that suspicious capital could enter Montenegro in this way, the economic citizenship program was formally ended at the end of 2022, but submitted applications are still being processed.
"When it comes to economic citizenships, that number is limited to two thousand citizenships and, according to CCE data, that number was exceeded in September last year," said Suljević.
And by granting economic passports, Montenegro received 412 million euros, of which the most – over 250 and a half million – for projects in the fields of tourism and agriculture.
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