Montenegro

Anti-Corruption Legislation in Montenegro to be harmonized with the UN Convention Against Corruption

At the opening session of the Conference on Anti-Corruption Legislation in Montenegro, Ms. Gordana Đurović, Deputy Prime Minister for European Integrations in the Government of Montenegro said that the obligation of the Government and the institutions which propose changes in legislation is to work more intensively on that issue. “Regardless of the Convention’s small size, its set of recommendations are complex and they reach into a significant part of Montenegrin legislation, especially in the domain of introducing measures concerning fighting corruption, incrimination in corruption, developing of mutual legal assistance and return on assets,” Ms. Đurović stated.

Mr. Oliver Stolpe, Expert of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reminded that criminal acts of corruption exist even if there is no material damage, as a mere intention to attain illegal material benefit is enough. He also pointed out the Article 20 of the Convention regarding Illicit Enrichment, which states: “Subject to its constitution and fundamental principles of its legal system, each State Party should consider adopting such legislative and other measures as may be necessary to establish as a criminal offence, when committed intentionally, illicit enrichment, that is, a significant increase in the assets of a public official that he or she cannot reasonably explain in relation to his or her lawful income.” Mr. Stolpe emphasized that the Office of Tax Administration could also contribute to revealing of these acts due to its access to financial applications.

Ambassador Ms. Paraschiva Badescu, Head of the OSCE Mission to Montenegro evaluated that fighting against corruption entails long, hard and at times quite painful efforts of all the segments of society as well as great patience and endurance. “Activities in Montenegro in the past several years represent an important step in that direction. New legislation in the domain of public procurement and prevention of conflict of interest and new criminal legislation have created a good basis for taking up successful activities on fighting corruption,” Ms. Badescu said reminding that OSCE has helped in developing many regulations in the reform process. 

“One of key components of the UNDP Anti-Corruption Project is to assist the Government of Montenegro to fulfill its commitment on aligning its legislation with the UNCAC, which has been ratified by the Montenegrin Parliament in October 2006,“ said Mr. Garret Tankosić Kelly, UNDP Resident Representative a.i./UN Interagency Focal Point in Montenegro. “Although the 2007 rate constitutes an improvement in comparison to the previous period, it still remains a very challenging issue. And despite the encouraging economic growth, the problem of corruption should stay in focus, since The World Bank identified correlation – stating that countries with endemic but predictable corruption have had a strong increase of investments,” Mr. Tankosić Kelly concluded.

 

Representatives of various government institutions, non-governmental organizations and the international community participated in the conference, while experts presented the results of their analysis of key Montenegrin legislation for fighting corruption in the context of the Convention. “Montenegro has made progress in fighting corruption over the past several years but this issue still represents a great challenge and the obligatory segment of European perspective, and harmonization of Montenegrin legislation with the UNCAC is one of priority projects that Montenegro has to start working on as soon as possible,” the participants of the conference evaluated.

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Criminal Code and Criminal Procedure Code are important because they create a national legislative framework for combating social anomalies with the elements of corruption and organized crime. Henceforth, the conference attempted to contribute to the adequate definition of roles and appropriate interaction of judiciary, prosecution and police in the aforementioned context. This especially applies to the engagement of specific measures such as secret surveillance in the corruption cases.

Conflict of Interests Law has been identified by many international partners as the weakest link in the legislative framework for fight against corruption. One of the aims of the UNDP Anti-Corruption Project is to provide its Governmental partners with the guidelines on how to adjust this regulation to the best international standards and thus assist the Government of Montenegro to adequately respond to one of the most important respective requirements of EU integrations process.

The importance of Public Procurement Law lies in the fact that approximately 12% of budgetary resources are disbursed through the public procurement system.

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According to the Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index for 2007, Montenegro is one of the countries with highest level of perception of corruption in Europe.