After withdrawing the decision on the concession act for the quarry in Krimovica without explanation at the end of last year, the Government of Montenegro, despite the opposing of the locals and the Municipality of Kotor, as well as the obvious violation of legal procedure, gave the green light yesterday to the Ministry of Capital Investments (MCI) to continue with this procedure.
Thus, MCI is finally given a free hand to conduct a public call that openly favours the company “Carinvest”, current concessionaire at that location, while the president of the Municipality of Budva, Marko Carević, is allowed to continue exploiting stone in Krimovica for another 30 years.
Everything that has happened in the last year indicates suspicion of an informal agreement between Carević and MCI, the realization of which began in January last year when “Carinvest” officially sent an initiative to draft a new concession act that would actually extend Carević’s existing concession for another 30 years.
Although the line minister Mladen Bojanić and MCI later denied that the initiative for the new contract came from Carević, the information about that is unequivocally contained in the draft of the concession document that the Government of Montenegro adopted at yesterday’s session.
The document also contains data that in drafting of the concession act, MCI used data provided by “Carinvest”, which, if the law was fully followed, would disqualify Carević’s company from participating in the tender.
So far, MCI and Bojanić have not commented on this apparent conflict of interest, as well as on other problematic items in the concession document that openly favour the president of the Municipality of Budva.
One of them is the fact that in addition to state plots, MCI offers several plots belonging to Carević family in an “open, transparent and non-discriminatory” public tender. This certainly enables the Carević family to come out as a winner in this tender, even if they do not get the concession.
MANS previously warned MCI and the Government that after 15 years of stone exploitation in Krimovica, it is necessary to make a serious analysis of the current implementation of the contract with Carević, environmental impact assessment, environmental remediation plan, as well as to answer questions regarding the conflict of interest and the fact that MCI also offers private plots of Carević under the concession.
All these questions, including the one addressed to Minister Bojanić about the motives for trying to secure a concession to Carević at all costs, unfortunately remained unanswered.
A year ago, MANS warned the Government of Montenegro that such agreements with tycoons like Carević are a continuation of the practice we had the opportunity to see in the last thirty years of rule of the previous regime, and that it was unacceptable for MCI and Minister Bojanić to make such compromise at the expense of citizens and the rule of law.
Yesterday’s adoption of the mentioned concession act is a sort of answer to the question of whether public interest and respect for the law are more important to the Government of Montenegro and the Ministry of Capital Investments, or Marko Carević’s profit interest to significantly increase his wealth with another illegal business.
MANS
