In July 2012, MANS, Montenegro’s leading anti-corruption NGO, asked for records from the country’s business registry on behalf of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). It took more than one year to get a response. That response simply said that the files were no longer available in the registry.
The same month MANS made another request on behalf of OCCRP – this time to the land registry of Montenegro. Despite a court ruling ordering the registry to release land records, considered public records in all democratic countries and available to anyone upon request, the registry still failed and continues to fail to provide records.
Both documents are important to the very fabric of a democracy. They tell the people who is doing business, who is winning tenders, and who is buying state property. But it also tells people the extent of the Montenegrin governments ties to international drug traffickers, the looting of the state’s resources to benefit a few people and the deeply engrained corruption that extends to every corner of Montenegro. The government does not want the people to know the truth. There is no other reason to close basic public records.
This was not the first time MANS or reporters in Montenegro were not allowed access to business or land records. The government’s flagrant disregard for its own laws is well documented and works directly against Montenegro’s EU aspirations. Now the government wants to make matters worse by closing off more records online.
Recently, authorities of Montenegro took down the JMBG number from online databases. The JMBG is a – unique number that helps identify the real person who owns a company or property. This effectively makes the records useless to the public and journalists and introduces speculation, hearsay and inaccuracy into the process of identifying people. This is contrary to the very premise of public records – that the public be allowed to know how its government works and who it is working with.
In a country where police and prosecutors are doing nothing to prosecute high level corruption and organized crime, journalists and civil society actors are the only deterrent to corruption. When transparency is eliminated, Montenegro will continue its slide toward a crime state. It will also face more challenges to being accepted in the EU.
Much of the gutting of transparency has been attributed to meeting EU standards for privacy. This is not true. There must be a balance between privacy and transparency. If a person seeks to interact with government and use public resources, we, as the public have a right to know who they are. They give up their right to privacy when they bid for tenders, buy land, drive a car and do other actions that rely on public roads, the public trust and that interact with other person’s interests. Oher solutions have been found in other countries. For example, the UK,Cyprus, France and other countries publish a person’s date of birth, registered address and nationality — information sufficient to establish someone’s true identity.
For that reason OCCRP requests that, until some other solution is found, the JMBG number be included in Montenegro’s databases. And the politicians of Montenegro accept their responsibility to govern fairly and in a transparent manner.
Drew Sullivan
Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project
Sarajevo/Bucharest/Washington
