OCCRP Reacts To Government Media

First Bank - First Family
Investigation

Recently, a Montenegrin government daily started a series of stories about the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and its reporters and editors. The articles to date were inaccurate, negative, lacking any documentation and involved interviews with persons making unsubstantiated charges.

Banner: OCCRP

Related Articles

Zavala: Cape Corruption
First Bank loan funds were used in illegal construction on Cape Zavala and a waterpark that never happened. Both projects were linked to ruling party vice president and former President of Serbia and Montenegro Svetozar Marovic and members of his family.
Saving the Bank at Any Cost
Despite the advice of the World Bank, the government of Montenegro refused to seize the bank controlled by the family of former Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic even though a low interest loan hung in the balance. Instead, it spent two years trying to remove government funds from the ailing bank. As a result, the government had to take high interest commercial loans. Again, the state chose the interests of First Bank over the interests of the people.
Banking above the Law
An analysis of Central Bank reports shows that First Bank systematically broke a number of major laws and regulations governing the banking sector including banking law, anti-money laundering law, generally accepted accounting practices and reporting standards.
Zavala: Cape Corruption
First Bank loan funds were used in illegal construction on Cape Zavala and a waterpark that never happened. Both projects were linked to ruling party vice president and former President of Serbia and Montenegro Svetozar Marovic and members of his family.
Saving the Bank at Any Cost
Despite the advice of the World Bank, the government of Montenegro refused to seize the bank controlled by the family of former Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic even though a low interest loan hung in the balance. Instead, it spent two years trying to remove government funds from the ailing bank. As a result, the government had to take high interest commercial loans. Again, the state chose the interests of First Bank over the interests of the people.
Banking above the Law
An analysis of Central Bank reports shows that First Bank systematically broke a number of major laws and regulations governing the banking sector including banking law, anti-money laundering law, generally accepted accounting practices and reporting standards.
First Bank - First Family
See the project

Reported by

OCCRP
May 20, 2012

Recently, a Montenegrin government daily started a series of stories about the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and its reporters and editors. The article to date was inaccurate, negative, lacking any documentation and involved an interview with a person making unsubstantiated charges.

OCCRP's policy is not to respond in detail to these types of smear stories. We believe they are designed to distract attention from the serious allegations raised by our series on First Bank and the Djukanovic government’s favorable treatment of the former prime minister’s family business. We believe the readers are smart enough to recognize this.

OCCRP welcomes a healthy public debate about the issues that we and others have raised. No one has refuted the specifics of our story except for broad refutations with no details. We believe the people deserve a complete and accurate accounting of how their public resources are used. We have opened the debate with stories and documents that prove our allegations. We do not quote human sources to prove our points but rather the government's own documents. We have provided documents online for readers to make up their own minds. They can be found [/en/first-bank-first-family/documents](on the documents page).

We also believe the use of the state-owned Pobjeda to slander people who disagree with the government is a grave misuse of public resources.

OCCRP is a consortium of investigative centers, commercial media and journalists from more than 15 countries. It includes Novaya Gazeta in Moscow and the Kyiv Post in Kyiv as well as non-profit centers in Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Hungary, Georgia, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Latvia, Macedonia and soon others. It is the most decorated organization in the region having won more international prizes for excellence in investigative reporting than any other including the 2011 Daniel Pearl Award, the Online Journalism Award, the Global Shining Light award, the Tom Renner award for crime reporting (with ICIJ) among many others.