After general secretary of the Union of Municipalities of Montenegro Refik Bojadzic, former member of the Electric Power Company of Montenegro (EPCG) board of directors Boris Buskovic and ten more persons were arrested on suspicion of being members of criminal organisation involved in the Primorka affair, they have been remanded in 72 hour detention before being brought to investigative judge of the High Court in Podgorica, Dnevne Novine newspaper writes.
This affair cost state budget over €4m.
At the same time, the Special State Prosecutor’s Office (SDT) issued an arrest warrant against Predrag Stamatovic, an advisor at the Embassy of Montenegro in Brussels and Slovenian national Crtomir Mesaric, former director of NLB Bank.
In addition to Nebojsa Boskovic, the owner of the Krizma company, who has been said to be the organizer of the criminal group, Vinko Markovic, Sonja Becovic, Sefik Kurtagic, Mitar Bajceta, Darko Konjevic, Irena Mijanovic, Biljana Boskovic and Vukica Perovic were arrested yesterday.
They are charged with abuse of office in economy, abuse of office in economy by aiding and abetting the crime and abuse of office committed in an organised manner.
As DN reported last night, Ratko Pantovic, attorney of Nebojsa Boskovic, said that the hearing had lasted for several hours and that his client had pleaded not guilty.
“My client is charged with creating a criminal organisation and abuse of office by aiding and abetting the crime. He explicitly denied the allegations he has been charged with. He has been held in custody for up to 72 hours,” Pantovic said noting that SDT has not given them the investigation order or any other relevant documents yet.
SDT launched the investigation in this case in April two years ago because of the controversial €4m bank guarantee the state issued to the Primorka company.
On 1 July 2010, the Government of Montenegro issued a €4m guarantee for a €14.4m loan granted to the Melgonija Primorka company. In addition to the guarantee, the company’s assets were given as collateral. The loan was spent for liabilities of the Krisma Motors company in the amount of €2.77m, whereas €6.55m were directed to Krisma Trade company and €5.07m to Primorka. However, workers were not paid even though the loan was granted for the purpose of paying their wages, bridging service gaps, developing social welfare programmes and paying liabilities to creditors.
SDT has a reasonable doubt that at the beginning of 2008, a criminal group was formed in Podgorica and Bar in order to gain illegal profit, using the business structures of the Ministry of Finance, in which some the group members were performing official duties, as well as the economic structure of legal entities, in which some of the group members were responsible persons.
“There is a reasonable suspicion that the criminal organisation planned to use two legal entities from Podgorica and one legal entity from Bar to purchase the assets of the Primorka company under favourable terms through the company bankruptcy. That was financed a loan taken out from a bank. It is also suspected that untrue conditions and results of operations of the mentioned companies were presented in the business plans, as well as the plan according to which the loan should have been used for the revival of production in Primorka and payment of liabilities to workers who lose their jobs. The plan was presented in order to get financial assistance from the Government of Montenegro, which was not used for that purpose, but for the loan repayment,” SDT stated.
Basic Prosecutor’s Office in Bar launched an inquiry into the case of Melgonia Primorka in April 2015. The checks started after a former employee Dzevdet Begzic had submitted documents allegedly proving that the loan was not spent for the needs of Melgonia, but on repaying other companies’ debts. Nebojsa Boskovic is the owner of the Cyprus-based Melgonia Holding Limited company, which is the founder of Melgonia Primorka.
