Statement by Deputy Prime Minister Koprivica on the Možura Project

Today we are presenting new facts regarding the Možura wind farm project, which raise serious questions about the manner in which the then Government, led by Prime Minister Đukanović, managed this matter.

In February 2015, the Government acquired a clear contractual right to terminate the contract for the Možura wind farm project, because the investor had not begun construction within the deadline stipulated in the contract, which was two months from the issuance of the construction permit, issued on 15 December 2014.

At that moment, the state had three strong instruments for protecting the public interest at its disposal: the right to terminate the contract, the possibility to collect the bank guarantee of €1.5 million, and the possibility of launching a new tender, while using the documentation, permits and technical analyses that had already been obtained. However, the Government at the time, led by Prime Minister Đukanović, did not use any of those mechanisms.

Instead, the then Ministry of Economy engaged the law firm Moravčević, Vojnović and Partners to prepare a legal opinion on the state’s further course of action and whether the project should be transferred to the interested company Enemalta. The documentation we have obtained shows that this law firm was not merely an advisor to the state.

At the same time, it also had a business relationship with the company Enemalta, the state energy company of Malta that later became the owner of the Možura project.

Even more indicative is the fact that this law firm also received a special power of attorney from Enemalta, signed by its Chief Executive Officer Frederick Azzopardi, authorizing it to represent the company in the process of acquiring the project from Cifidex, the company through which control over the project had been exercised.

At the same time, that very law firm was providing the Government and the Ministry with legal opinions and interpretations regarding the transfer of the concession and ownership of the project.

In other words, the same law firm was advising the state on whether and how to approve the transfer of the project, while at the same time holding a power of attorney to represent the company that was taking over that project.

According to available data, during 2018, the company Možura Wind Park, owned by Enemalta, to which the project had been transferred – a course of action that this law firm had advised and recommended to the Government – paid that law firm approximately €67,000 through six invoices. These facts raise serious questions regarding conflicts of interest and the integrity of the legal advice that the state received at that time.

In the case of Možura, the central question is not what the companies did, but who in the Government decided that the state should waive its right to terminate the contract and collect the guarantee, and why the Government chose precisely a law firm that represented the company that would ultimately take over the project.

The selection of a law firm that advised the state on whether to approve the transfer of the project, while simultaneously representing the company taking over the Možura project, raises serious suspicion that the entire arrangement was part of a pre-arranged scheme, and that an objective opinion was not sought as a basis for decision-making, but rather that the groundwork was being laid for a corrupt transaction with far-reaching consequences.

The decisions made at that time led to a situation in which the state moved from a position where it could terminate the contract and collect the bank guarantee to a situation where the project ended up in the hands of other companies through a series of transactions in which intermediaries generated multi-million profits while developing corrupt schemes.

The Možura project has been the subject of international investigations and of inquiries by the courageous Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who investigated corruption connected with this deal.

She was murdered in 2017. This only strengthens our obligation to ensure that the full truth comes to light.

After everything presented, key questions arise: who in the Government decided that the state should renounce its rights, and why was an advisor chosen who was working for the other side?

Who dared to abandon the protection of the public interest and the collection of the €1.5 million guarantee?

Through this deal, the state was knowingly and deliberately placed in an unfavorable position, which is why we are speaking about corruption at the highest level. This represents the direct political responsibility of the then Prime Minister Đukanović and Minister Kavarić, while the competent authorities should determine other forms of responsibility as well.

For all of the above reasons, this documentation will be submitted to the competent institutions in order to establish all the facts and any potential responsibility for the decisions that caused damage to the interests of the state, as well as to determine whether the public interest was compromised in a way that indicates the existence of corruption.

The citizens of Montenegro have the right to know how decisions were made regarding projects worth hundreds of millions of euros and whether, in those processes, the public interest was protected or violated.