Svetozar Marovic’s prison sentence has been reduced by another month, after court accepted his attorney Zdravko Begovic’s request for merging his sentences for different accounts. Begovic confirmed for Dan newspaper that he had received a court decision on merging and reducing the prison sentences.
“Our request has been accepted and on that basis my client has been punished to two years and five months in prison instead of doing two and a half years,” said Begovic.
There is also the prospect of his sentence being further reduced by a third, for good conduct.
In addition, his sentence will be further reduced for the time spent in detention (Marovic spent six months there).
According to Dan, this means that Marovic will not spend more than two years in prison. Marovic signed two pledge agreements with the Special State Prosecutor’s Office, admitting that he was the head of the “Budva criminal group”, which cost the municipal budget tens of millions of euros.
On 17 May 2016, he signed two agreements that oblige him to spend a total of 42 months in prison and pay €1.1m.
Immediately after signing the agreement, he was released from remand prison, where he spent six months. In the plea bargain Marovic admitted that he was head of a criminal group whose embezzlements in the projects Jaz, TQ Plaza, Copyright, Krapina, VTE, Bulevar and Prijevor cost municipal budget millions of euros.
Other members of the criminal group were former high ranking municipal officials and their associates. Marovic was arrested and remanded in prison on suspicion of having committed a continued criminal offense of abuse of office by incitement in an organised manner.
After months of negotiations with the Special State Prosecutor’s Office, on 1 September High Court in Podgorica confirmed the plea bargain under which Marovic agreed to spend a year and ten months in prison, to pay €50,000 to charity and to return the state €1.1m due to his guilt in the cases Donji Bulevar, Krapina, Property Investment and Copyright.
