The Court of Appeal also held that the state should not pay the consortium "Bistrica Clean Energy" doo Podgorica 27,5 million euros in damages for alleged lost profits because the Concession Agreement for the construction of a small hydroelectric power plant (sHP) on Bistrica was terminated.
This was announced by the Court of Appeal, which thus confirmed the verdict of the Commercial Court from April this year.
The majority owner of the "Bistrica Clean Energy" consortium is the company "BP Hydropower" owned by businessman Žarko Burić.
The Court of Appeal stated in a statement that the state should not even pay 602.818,23 euros with interest for actual damages.
"The Court of Appeal reversed the first-instance judgment in relation to compensation for actual damage, by rejecting as unfounded the claim that the defendant State of Montenegro be obliged to pay 602.818,23 euros with interest and, on behalf of the accrued interest from the date of individual payments until April 5, 2022, an additional amount of 157.879,05 euros. The Court of Appeal issued the aforementioned judgment in the proceedings for deciding on the appeals of the plaintiff and the defendant," the statement reads.
According to the Court of Appeal's assessment, the statement states that at the time the Government adopted the Conclusion on the termination of the contract at the end of 2019, the conditions for the termination of the contract had been met due to the concessionaire's failure to fulfill the contractual obligation stipulated in Article 11, paragraph 5 of the Concession Agreement.
"This is because at that moment the concession agreement was still in force, and thus all its provisions, including the concessionaire's obligation to submit a new or extend the existing bank guarantee within 30 days before the expiration of the existing bank guarantee, which obligation the plaintiff as the concessionaire undeniably did not fulfill, because the then valid bank guarantee expired on January 8, 2021, and the plaintiff did not submit a new one by the agreed deadline," the Court of Appeal specified.
It was concluded that there was neither abuse of rights nor illegality in the proceedings on the part of the defendant, because the concession contract in question was terminated by a statement that was given in full accordance with the contractual and legal conditions, and the plaintiff did not prove that the defendant failed to fulfill any of its obligations assumed by the contract, for which reasons it is not entitled to compensation for either ordinary damage or lost profits. Judgment Pž.br. 313/2025 of 18.09.2025 with detailed reasoning will be published on the website of the Court of Appeal of Montenegro.
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