Judges of the Supreme Court: Dragica Milačić, Hasnija Simonović, Miraš Radović, Petar Stojanović and Radule Kojović received loans from the Government even though at the time they owned apartments or other immovable property. In this way, “the housing issue was solved” for some judges, even though they already owned apartments of over 100 m2 in Podgorica.
At the end of 2017, Dragica Milačić received a € 20,000 loan from the Government, despite the fact that at the time of the request, she owned a 108-square-meter, three-bedroom apartment in Podgorica, where she lived completely alone. It is still unknown what the loan was spent on because to date, Milačić has not reported the purchase of a new property.
Milačić is required to repay only €4,200 out of the five-year government loan, with a monthly instalment of only €70. By this, the government gave her a total of €15,800. If Milačić had taken this loan within 1000+ Phase III project (with an interest rate of 3%), she would have had to repay close to € 22,000.
In 2009, Hasnija Simonović received a loan from the state in the amount of €20,000. The loan was granted even though Judge Simonović’s family at that time owned an apartment of 94 square meters in Podgorica, 4,000 square meters plot in Podgorica, as well as a house and land in Kolašin (15 ha). It is interesting that at the moment of receiving a loan from the Government, the family not only owned real estate, but annually reported income from agriculture alone in the amount of €10,000.
In 2009, when he was the Minister of Justice, Miraš Radović received a €40,000 housing loan from the Government, with a repayment period of 20 years, even though he had an apartment of 83 m2 in Podgorica at the time.
Monthly instalment for this loan is €40.4, which means that he will repay a total of €9,696, just one quarter of the money taken from the state. Had he taken the same loan amount through the 1000+ project (which was realized in 2010 – 2011), where the interest rate was 5%, with the same repayment period, Radović would have had to pay over 22 thousand Euros for interest alone, and with a regular loan with commercial banks, even close to 28 thousand Euros.
After receiving the loan, Radović did not report new real estate until 2014, when he entered into the property file part of the ownership of a 100-square-meter house and land of 104,148 m2 in Kolašin (inheritance from his parents).
In 2009, Petar Stojanović received a 20-year loan, the total amount of which he did not specify, but he did state a monthly instalment of €75.75, so it can be concluded that it is a state loan under favourable terms. According to his card, that loan was used to buy a new 119 m2 apartment in Podgorica. When he received the said loan, Stojanović already owned an apartment of 83.38 m2 in Podgorica, allotted by the Government of Montenegro.
The same arrangement had Judge Radula Kojović as well, whose instalment for housing loan received from the Supreme Court is €75. The loan was granted to Kojović in 2009, although at that moment he owned an apartment in Podgorica of 74 m2 and a share of a 150m2 house in Bijelo Polje. His wife, Milena Kojović, also took a state loan (Pension and Disability Insurance Fund) in 2006 in the amount of € 15,000, out of which she is obliged to repay less than half the amount (instalment € 22.53).
MANS warns that such granting of loans is in contravention of the Government’s Decision on the manner and criteria for addressing housing needs of officials. Article 6 of that Decision states: “An official shall have the right to address housing need, provided that he/she or a member of his/her family household:
– does not have an apartment, or a family apartment building owned, co-owned or jointly owned;
– has an apartment or a family apartment building owned, co-owned or jointly owned of insufficient area.
MANS
Information on all apartments and loans to be published
MANS has already requested that all information on housing loans granted to government officials, including pre-2016, be published.
Back in 2016, MANS requested from the Housing Commission of the Government of Montenegro all decisions and contracts on approved housing loans for public officials for the period from 2012 to 2015, but we were denied access to this information by the decision of the then President of the Commission, Predrag Bošković.
MANS appealed against this decision, but even after two decisions by the Administrative Court in favour of MANS, Bošković declined to release the information.
