RTCG employee bought an apartment on favorable terms, then sold it for three times the price: Earned as much as 70.000 euros

While most citizens struggle to buy an apartment in the relentless real estate market whose prices never seem to drop significantly, some who manage to solve their housing problem at an extremely favorable price seem to not appreciate it enough.

This is demonstrated by the cases of certain employees of Radio Television of Montenegro (RTCG) who bought 40 square meter apartments for around 30 thousand euros, and sold them for three times the price.

Is that allowed, but is it moral?

Buying an apartment for 30.000 and selling it for three times the price sounds impossible? It's not, if you work at RTCG.

This is shown by an advertisement for the sale of a one-room apartment, published on social networks by a real estate agency in Podgorica. According to the advertisement, a square meter in the building at the Old Airport costs 2.575 euros, or a 40-square-meter apartment costs 103.000 euros. And here, given the relentless real estate market, it would not be surprising if the building was not built to solve the housing issue of RTCG employees, who bought the apartments on favorable terms, for less than 30.000 euros, or a little more than 700 euros per square meter, and recently received the keys.

According to reliable information from Television Vijesti, this apartment was sold for 103.000 euros in the middle of this week. Thus, one of the employees of the Public Service made a profit of as much as 70.000 euros.

This did not surprise representatives of one of the unions at the Public Service Broadcasting Company, who, during the allocation of these apartments, warned of corruption, which they claim was sponsored by the general director of the media company, Boris Raonić, and the president of the RTCG Council, Veselin Drljević.

They claim that the irregularities began with the preparation of the Rules on the Distribution of Apartments, which is why they filed a lawsuit against the Rules with the Administrative and Constitutional Courts.

"A significant portion of those who applied were denied due to the bizarre scoring. Thanks to irresponsible and ignorant members of the RTCG Council, the illegal Boris Raonić managed to make sense of both the Labor Law and the RTCG Collective Agreement through numerous changes to the systematization, because in RTCG, jobs are not distributed according to knowledge, education, or experience. It seems that it has become common practice to purposefully read laws and rules for favorites. Only in the Public Service, people with no more than 3 to 4 years of work experience in RTCG, who were illegally employed by the illegal general director, can get an apartment at the expense of long-time workers," said the Trade Union Organization of the Public Broadcasting Service of RTCG.

And this is not the first case of an apartment being resold by an RTCG employee for 700 euros per square meter. The Independent daily Vijesti also wrote about this in May.

The President of the Commission for the Allocation of Apartments at RTCG, Vjekoslav Mikulić, said in a telephone interview with Television Vijesti that he did not participate in the development of the Regulation for the Allocation of Apartments, but that the Commission only received it as a guide for selecting the lucky winners.

Although the Regulation does not prohibit the resale of apartments purchased in this way, the question arises – should we explicitly prohibit what ethics clearly warns against? Because, if you get an apartment on favorable terms to solve your housing issue, is it moral to resell it and make a lot of money from it? Television Vijesti tried to get answers to these questions from Raonić and the RTCG Council. They did not make it to the broadcast of the report in Vijesti at half past six on Television Vijesti.