Clear guidelines given to Police and Interior Ministry to establish specialised unit for fight against environmental crime

The Bureau for Operational Coordination held its 10th session, which was attended by the members of the Bureau, as well as the Minister of the Interior Danilo Šaranović, acting Assistant Director of the Police Directorate Velimir Furtula, and newly elected Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of Montenegro, Brigadier General Miodrag Vuksanović.

The meeting unanimously supported having been presented at the conference with the EU ambassador, Minister of Ecology and environmental activists and clear guidelines were given to the Ministry of the Interior and the Police Directorate to establish an organisational unit, or a specialised team, within the Sector for the Fight Against Crime that will exclusively focus on combating environmental crime.

The Bureau for Operational Coordination strongly supported the continuation of activities by the Ministry of the Interior and the Police Directorate in implementing procedure for determining the existence of security threats, controlling property, income and lifestyle, as well as other legal procedures regarding the integrity of police officers, calling on all intelligence and security bodies to prioritise the vetting process, that is, the cleansing of the system from all unauthorised influences and compromised personnel in accordance with their competencies.

Summarising the security situation and again pointing to the continuity of security challenges, the inefficiency of judicial processes and procedural abuses, as well as the need to continue to intensify preventive, intelligence, and repressive activities, and define a greater number of strategically important obligations of the bodies in anticipation of the tourist season, the Bureau for Operational Coordination praised the mutual cooperation between intelligence and security sector bodies, especially the Police Directorate and the National Security Agency, as well as the results achieved by the Police Directorate in the areas of national priorities in the fight against serious and organised crime, with a special emphasis on prosecuting 2123 individuals for 2225 criminal offenses in the first quarter, the continued dismantling of high-risk organised criminal groups operating at the transnational level, numerous prevention of serious crimes, the detention of 140 individuals under warrants, the prosecution of 50 individuals for smuggling over 81 thousand packages of cigarettes that caused damage to the budget of Montenegro exceeding EUR 64 million, as well as the continuation of activities aimed at eradicating tobacco mafia and prosecuting their associates in the intelligence and security sectors.

The Bureau for Operational Coordination welcomed the intensification of activities regarding the implementation of the video surveillance project across municipalities, particularly highlighting the decisions made by the Minister of the Interior to establish video surveillance in the Royal Capital Cetinje and the municipality of Herceg Novi, as well as the fact that consent had already been obtained from the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data for the Cetinje project.

As to traffic safety, the Bureau for Operational Coordination summarised numerous preventive and repressive activities, which resulted, inter alia, in the deprivation of liberty of 3020 individuals in the first five months of this year due to serious violations of traffic safety, as well as testing 1405 drivers for the presence of psychoactive substances, of which 668 or 47.5% was tested positive. There are also ongoing activities regarding drafting amendments to the Law on Traffic Safety, which is expected to be reviewed soon by the Government and the Parliament.

The Bureau for Operational Coordination emphasised as very important the activities of the Police Directorate and the Customs Administration in finalising and signing a cooperation agreement, which defines the exchange of criminal intelligence data, stressing that the Bureau has identified the integration of databases and records of the intelligence and security sectors as one of its priority activities.