The news that the Montenegrin police director broke to the country’s security and defense council last week was incredibly optimistic: There’s apparently no organized crime or corruption in the country, there are no untouchable people, and police will arrest anyone named in an Interpol warrant.
Such optimism flies in the face of nearly every recent report coming out of Montenegro. Most recently, OCCRP and its partners worldwide reported on Italy’s investigation of Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic’s role in tobacco smuggling in the 1990s , and on the nepotism and cronyism that’s rampant in Djukanovic’s Montenegro today. (Djukanovic has denied any wrongdoing.)
But don’t take our word for it. A former Djukanovic advisor last week slammed his ex-master as a “cartel boss .” Montenegro’s own anti-money laundering chief has said that his office needs to crack down on the country’s unfettered real estate market . A 2007 State Department report on the country noted that:
Montenegro Cop: No Corruption Here
Published: 28 July 2009
By Beth
Illegal proceeds are generated from drug trafficking, official corruption, tax evasion, organized crime and other types of financial crimes. Proceeds from illegal activities are being heavily invested in all forms of real estate.
And Montenegro’s own opposition accused the police recently of failing to arrest various individuals under Interpol warrants.
Given that the police official, Veselin Veljovic, thinks there’s no organized crime in his country, he probably doesn’t think that there’s anything unsavory about a recent government move to attract casinos to the Montenegrin coast . The government is selling “concessions” to casinos for a one-time fee of €2 million, and annual payments of €50,000. Already one major Russian gambling operator (Russia shut down all its casinos last month ) is in the process of buying a large hotel on the coast and making plans to jet wealthy Russians down to the Adriatic to gamble. All this in a country deemed by Forbes to be “a haven for Russian money launderers.”
Anti-Corruption Moves in Other Countries
In other news from the region, Kosovo police last week arrested a judge, an insurance agent and 11 lawyers in what they called a major crackdown on organized crime . No further details were available about the case. Serbian police last week seized nearly 20 kilos of heroin at a border crossing with Bulgaria , and arrested a Turkish citizen driving an Audi with Swiss plates. In Romania, police arrested two Israelis and a Romanian suspected of trafficking human eggs to foreign couples who visited a fertility clinic in Bucharest. In Bulgaria, new Prime Minister Boyko Borissov pledged to fight graft at his swearing-in ceremony.
Kyrgyzstan: Fraud Claims in President’s Victory
Opposition leaders in Kyrgyzstan last week showed video evidence that they say backs up their claims that last week’s presidential election was marred by vote-rigging and other malfeasance. Incumbent President Kurmanbek Bakiyev won a second term last Thursday with 83 percent of the vote, according to official results. But opposition candidate campaign manager Bakyt Beshimov played a video at a press conference Saturday showing men casting multiple ballots and a group of voters being bused to and voting at several polling locations. Other groups, according to the New York Times , also reported that the Kyrgyz government ran an election that could be filed under, “vote early, vote often.”
The Union of Civic Organizations, an independent Kyrgyz election monitoring group, said in a statement on Friday that government officials were behind many of the violations in Thursday’s elections.
“On the day of the voting, massive ballot stuffing, often by members of the elections commission, as well as pressure by government officials on voters was observed,” the group said.
Report: EIB Due Diligence Slipping
The European Investment Bank (EIB) is not doing enough due diligence when it comes to making development loans outside the European Union , according to the watchdog group Counterbalance.
While the seven European NGOs that make up Counterbalance focused on the EIB funding projects in the third world that are run by companies registered in tax havens, the group’s report noted that the EIB’s follow-up monitoring leaves much to be desired.
And on its monitoring of clients and projects following project approval – where again companies receiving EIB money are relied on to report against themselves if there is a significant change, a concept open to broad interpretation.
Combined with the dramatic lack of transparency in the EIB which prevents concerned citizens’ groups checking up on the due diligence procedures or the evidence that is used, the EIB fails to make a convincing case that its money is all well-used according to its policy on fraud and corruption.
Swiss Court Grants Assets to Mobutu Heirs
In other developing-country corruption news, a Swiss court ruled in favor of kleptocracy last week in a verdict that awarded $7 million in Swiss assets to the heirs of late Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko , rather than back to the country from which Mobutu’s believed to have looted the assets. Mobutu came to power in Zaire in the 1960s and is believed to have looted $5 billion from the central African country before he was deposed in 1997. The Swiss assets were frozen that same year upon the request of Mobutu’s political successors in the Democratic Republic of Congo, prompting years of legal wrangling between DRC officials and Mobutu’s heirs over to whom the assets belong. The recent Swiss ruling cannot be appealed.
