Several Russian citizens are suspected of exchanging larger amounts of money for the Movement for Changes (PzP), that is, for DF, during the 2016 election campaign. Several sources unofficially confirmed this for Pobjeda.
This has been established under the investigation the Special Prosecutor’s Office has been conducting against PzP since October last year. The list of suspects contains the names of the PzP leader Nebojsa Medojevic, businessman Momir Nikolic, PzP director Dejan Vujisic, technical secretary of the party and Medojevic’s brother in law, Zeljko Scepanovic, and local foreign currency dealer Gordan Konatar.
The extended investigation also included five street foreign currency dealers – Milos Mrva Gvozdenovic, Dejan and Violeta Buskovic, Zeljko Pejovic and Radovan Scekic. They were arrested on 5 September upon the order of Special State Prosecutor’s Office on suspicion of having carried out money laundering for PzP during the election campaign. After the hearing before the investigation judge, they have been released from 72 hour remand prison pending further legal action.
Sources close to the investigation say that over a dozen witnesses have been examined during months of investigation. According to them, there is evidence collected that several more people belonged to the criminal group, which laundered several hundred thousand euros on several occasions before the elections.
Investigators are also focused on several Russian citizens after the latest arrests this month within the financial investigation into money laundering for party purposes. According to the information so far, this group of “tourists” intentionally came to Montenegro before the elections with a big sum of money (estimated at more than $100,000) in cash, which were exchanged in Podgorica and two other towns on the Montenegrin coast.
Since 19 October last year, investigators have been figuring out who was involved in the money laundering network and what the fraudulent scheme for covering up the origin of the disputed dollars was like. Transactions of Scepanovic and Konatar came into lime light last year in October, when they were caught with money of suspicious origin.
Then, police seized €30,000 from Scepanovic and €18,000 from Konatar. It was later found that Scepanovic exchanged $100,000 in euros on at least three occasions. Investigators believe that the money was intended for the payment of field activists engaged during the election campaign. The investigation showed the money intended for payment of PZP activists during the election day was kept in a safe of a Podgorica-based bank. Prosecutor’s Office believes that Nebojsa Medojevic and Miomir Nikolic led the criminal organisation engaged in money laundering.
Investigators have found that on several occasions Nikolic received from abroad almost €1m on his bank account. Those suspicious money transfers were mostly from the former Soviet republics, now EU members. According to the information obtained by the investigators, in a single transaction, Nikolic received €175,000 from Lithuania. They suspect those were transfers of money through Russian companies based in Lithuania.
