Today, MANS called on the Chief Special State Prosecutor to immediately open a case and launch an investigation against the Director of the Agency for Prevention of Corruption (APC), Jelena Perović, regarding the transcripts of the communication between her and Vesna Medenica, the accused former president of the Supreme Court.
The content of the communication between Perović and Medenica provide sufficient grounds for suspicion that the current director of APC has committed several criminal acts, including abuse of official position, negligence in discharging duties, unlawful influence, and incitement to unlawful influence.
Bearing in mind that Jelena Perović currently holds a public position that implies impeccable professional integrity, we believe that even the suspicions created by the mentioned communication with Medenica are sufficient to call into question the credibility of the decisions that APC has adopted so far, as well as all those that it will adopt in the following period.
Correspondence with the former president of the Supreme Court left very little room for suspicion that the previous unlawful decisions of the APC were the result of legal ignorance by Jelena Perović instead of a conscious intention to absolve the highest state officials of responsibility through a misinterpretation of the law.
In this regard, it will be particularly interesting to see the decision on the initiative to verify the origin of a part of the property of the former president of the country, Milo Đukanović, which refers to the collection of expensive watches, whose adoption was recently announced by Perović.
On the other hand, almost all decisions in key cases of checking the assets of high-ranking state officials have so far been adopted in their favour, i.e. by absolving them from any responsibility for violating the law. APC’s silence and avoidance to act on submitted initiatives, as well as decisions adopted contrary to the law, have so far been the subject of several rulings by the Administrative Court, while the quality of the decisions themselves was also subject to criticism in the latest report of the European Commission on Montenegro.
MANS has been warning for a long time about the fact that the credibility and professional integrity of APC has been seriously damaged, primarily by the actions of its Director, Jelena Perović, against whom several criminal charges have already been filed with the competent State Prosecutor’s Office.
Further stay of Jelena Perović in this position is absolutely unacceptable and would be a clear sign that Montenegro is still not ready to tackle corruption in an adequate way, especially corruption within state institutions, which represents the biggest obstacle to the further implementation of reforms and the continuation of European integration.
MANS
