“The Special Prosecutor’s Office has formed a case on the grounds of suspicion that the election campaign of certain political parties is financed from abroad, through suspicious financial transactions and donations, which represents a reasonable doubt that criminal offense of money laundering was committed”, special prosecutor Katnic said, adding that the case is at the inquiry stage and that they are collecting data from relevant institutions and take other legal actions”.
Foreign “donations”
On Wednesday, Pobjeda newspaper reported that the Prosecutor Office’s attention focused on cash inflows in the accounts of Montenegrin small enterprises in the last two or three months.
According to the same information, the money transferred to the accounts of certain companies and catering establishments in Niksic, Podgorica, Danilovgrad and Pljevlja came from the Serbian entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina and partly from Serbia and Slovenia.
Tens of thousands of euros were paid into the accounts (in several cases, more than €100,000 were recorded). The money was later “pumped out” from the accounts through paying employment contracts to natural persons.
Katnic was not willing to “publicly disclose more information” on the proceedings conducted in the Special State Prosecutor’s Office, for the investigation efficiency sake.
“I point out that the financing of political entities and electoral campaigns are prescribed by law and the Anti-Corruption Agency controls these funds. The Special State Prosecutor’s Office has been cooperating with the agency since it was established. Financing election campaign costs must be done in the manner prescribed by the Law on Financing of Political Parties through a special bank account to which all the funds for financing the elections, as well as all the payments of the election campaign expenses should be done… Financing the election campaign bypassing the political entity’s account is punishable”, the special prosecutor warned.
Katnic pointed out that the Prosecutor’s Office has examined a number of other reports on alleged shortcomings of the electoral roll and changing the polling station where certain voters were registered and the alleged purchases of ID cards, but that the reports were rejected.
According to Katnic, the Special Prosecutor’s Office is monitoring all the information pieces and media reports in order to respond to any possible abuse of electoral law. In this regard, the prosecution initiated another inquiry on alleged payments to students and people from the diaspora based on an article published in Dan newspaper.
