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First meeting of the civil society and state auditors held

The first consultative meeting between State Audit Institution (SAI) and the civil society was held today, organized by Institute Alternative, with the support of the Royal Norwegian Embassy. On behalf of SAI, the meeting was attended by the Senate members, Nikola Kovačević, Branislav Radulović and Dragiša Pešić, who answered many questions posed by representatives of the civil society.

The special attention was dedicated to the way how the SAI chooses who will be subjected to audit in a certain year year and why certain subjects have not been put under the attention of SAI.

During the meeting, the representatives of the CSOs have been proposing institutions and state bodies which should be controlled by the SAI in the next period. Among others, participants mentioned the Capital City, Fund for professional rehabilitation and employment of people with disabilities, Fund for Solidarity Housing Development, large public companies on the central and local level, the Customs Administration, Directorate for Public Works, Directorate for Transport and others.

One of the issues raised was the poor quality of commercial audits, especially those of municipalities, as well as non-functional internal audit, the issue of monitoring the implementation of SAI recommendations. Also, the question raised was about whether some of the important reports (such as the Audit report of State guarantees and concessions) have had their effects, i.e, whether their findings had impact in determining accountability and to change the perceived problematic practices.

One of the key issues on which the participants exchanged their views was the filing of criminal charges by the SAI. So far, the representatives of SAI have stated that in case of an audit of the Montenegrin National Theatre (2010) submitted a report and the documentation to the State Prosecutor’s Office, but that they still did not have an response whether anything has been done in relation to this complaint. In other cases, when the negative opinion was issued, SAI has submitted the report to the State Prosecutor’s Office as well, but the situation was the same – they do not know what was done in relation to determining the responsibility for violations and irregularities. The majority opinion of NGO representatives is that the SAI should start building its capacity to file criminal charges and to begin with the implementation of that competence, which is emphasized in the Law on SAI. The representatives of the SAI appealed to other institutions, especially to the State Prosecutor’s office to pay more attention to their findings and work in order to achieve accountability for illegal acts which are determined to have the attribution of criminal act.

The representatives of SAI have, among others, pointed out their problems, such as the deficit of the auditors, legal experts and spatial capacities.

Institute Alternative, the organizer of the event, has said that it is necessary to establish better and more effective cooperation between SAI and CSOs. Moreover, it is stated that the today’s meeting is only the first in a row and that the civil society will, together with the SAI, make progress in the fight against the lack of transparency and accountability in managing the public funds.

The meeting is the part of the project “Together towards accountability – strengthening the impact of the state audit in Montenegro”, supported by the he Royal Norwegian Embassy in Belgrade. The goal of the project is to increase the level of the implementation of SAI’s recommendations, as well as strengthening ties with between the SAI and the Parliament of Montenegro, civil society organizations and internal auditors in the public sector.

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Press release: Annexes to Public Procurement Contracts Must be Published

Public Procurement Directorate neither does not keep track nor publishes information about the exact number of the annexes concluded annually, neither does keep track about the total amount of completed modifications of basic public procurement contracts, which creates the space for the misuse and limits the transparency.

In a response to a request for free access to information of the Institute Alternative, the Public Procurement Directorate has informed us that the number of completed annex during the last three years are available on the Public Procurement website, which is imprecise and incomplete information. By using “the advanced” search on this website, the information obtained is that there is a total of seven annexes concluded in 2014, while searching all data published in the previous year, it can be determined that a total of 28 annexes are available. However even this information which can be obtained after days of searching on the website is not final nor precise, because it is impossible to determine is this the final number of annexes concluded in 2014 or that number is bigger, since the Public Procurement Directorate does not publish how many annexes are concluded in the Annual Report on Public Procurement.

Furthermore, it is interesting that the certain contracts or annexes on the website are not published regularly, but without their basic elements, as a plain document, without the date, stamp or signature of the parties which concluded a contract. In practice, this means that it is possible that the total number of concluded annexes is much higher which implies that the legal norm on the percentage by which is allowed to modify the terms and amounts of the underlying contract is being violated.

Moreover, during the research we conducted during this year in January, the public procurement officers could not precisely answer to the question we posed, which was whether the annexes of the contracts are being published at all, as well as the question who keeps record about the violation already confirmed in the public procurement procedures. Their responses were contradictory.

Changes of the basic contracts create enormous space for the corruption and as such, they have to be controlled and approved by the Public Procurement Directorate, so it is necessary to inform the public about the details of the concluded annexes by publishing them.

Jovana MAROVIĆ

Research Coordinator

The research is conducted within the project “Civil Society and Citizens against Corruption in Public Procurement”, which is implemented by the Institute Alternative with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands. The activities aim at strengthening the cooperation between state and non-state actors in the joint efforts in identifying irregularities in public procurement and formulating the recommendations for improvement.

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Press release: Large number of complaints due to the deployment of staff in state administration

Permanent deployment of civil servants and state employees causes the dissatisfaction of staff in the state administration who often complaint about the demotion, according to the preliminary findings of the Institute Alternative (IA).

During 2014, total of 126 complaints have been filed against the order of demotion of civil servants and state employees, 89 of which were adopted, according to the research of IA conducted within the project “State administration in Montenegro – Equal for All”, financed by the U.S. Embassy in Podgorica.

Considering the fact that the number of employees in state administration is roughly 10500, the findings show that roughly one percent of employees has shown the dissatisfaction with the demotion procedures.

Although the Law stipulated the possibility of temporary and permanent demotion within and among the state administration organs, the majority of complaints are related to the permanent demotion within the single state body.

The employees in the state administration mostly complained because they felt illegally relegated, i.e. demoted to lower working positions which implies lower salaries and lower level of qualification.

In two cases, the orders for the demotion are explained as “the continuous mobbing and attempt of regimentation” by the officers who filed the complaint.

In one case, the officer was demoted to the lower position during his sick leave, although the Law clearly stipulates that it is not allowed to demote the civil servant or state employee during the period of permanent inability to work.

In 12 cases, the employees in the state administration have filed the complaint because they have been demoted to the positions not granting the beneficiary years of service, although that was the practice on the previous position.

However, the large number of the complaints was adopted due to formal omissions of the state bodies but not for the alleged demotion of the employees.

Namely, in the large number of cases the state bodies have been bringing the orders of demotion for the time period which was partly expired although the retroactive effect of these orders is not allowed, which was the reason for the cancellation of these orders.

Moreover, the majority of these complaints have been adopted because the parties had not been allowed to neither participate in the procedure or to give statements about the important facts and circumstances which had brought to their demotion.

The deployment of the civil servants and state employees due to reorganization and rationalization of jobs in state bodies and the termination of those, as well as the decisions on the selection of the candidates on previously published vacancies, is one of the two main ways of filling the vacancies in the state administration.

The filed complaints imply the widespread opinion of the civil servants and state employees that their deployment cannot jeopardize their previously obtained rights.

The Appeal Commission, however, advocates different point of view which can be seen in one order where it is explicitly stated that only in the case of the temporary deployment the employees can reserve their rights obtained at the previous position.

Milena Milošević

Public Policy researcher

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Memorandum of Cooperation signed with the State Prosecutor’s Office

Stevo Muk, the President of the Managing board of the Institute Alternative and Ivica Stanković, the Chief State Prosecutor have signed the Memorandum of Cooperation between Institute Alternative and State Prosecutor’s Office today.

The objective of the Memorandum is to formalize the existing cooperation and to lay ground for future joint work on the improvement of the conditions in the area of criminal justice.

Signing of this Memorandum for IA represents only a new step in our two-year intensive work with institutional framework for the fight against the corruption and organized criminal.

We will mention only few of our activities:

  • In year 2013, we have prepared the comprehensive study of comparative models of the institutional framework of five countries on emphasis on Special Public Prosecutor’s Offices for the fight against the corruption and organized crime;
  • Based on the conclusion of the study we have participated in the Working group for the preparation of Law on Special Prosecutor’s Office in the beginning of 2014, where we advocated for the recommendations for reforms that we obtained researching the advantages and disadvantages of different models;
  • Then, within the public discussion held in September last year, we have submitted our comments on the Draft Law on Special Public Prosecutor’s Office, Draft Law on Public Prosecution and Draft Law on Criminal procedure;
  • We have also analyzed problems in cooperation between Police and Prosecutor’s Office and published our research on concrete obstacles to more efficient work on the cases of these two state bodies, analysis of their program budgets and the analysis of the contents of their annual reports on their work;
  • In November last year we have delivered to the Chief State Prosecutor our initiative for introducing the practice of proactive publishing of the confirmed indictments, and in the meantime State Prosecutor’s Office has started to publish on their portal short announcements about it. Throughout the month, we have also pointed out possible benefits and harms of the announced general (re)election of the state prosecutors and proposed the opening of the public discussion on this important matter;
  • In January of the current year, we have actively contributed to the Parliament and competent working bodies on consideration of the key legislation to reform the Prosecutor’s Office by submitting comments, proposals and suggestions for improving the Draft Law on State Prosecutor’s Office and the Draft Law on Special Public Prosecutor’s Office. The significant number of our suggestions on these Drafts has been adopted.

Memorandum can be found here (only in Montenegrin)

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Announcement: Consultative meeting of the civil society and State auditors

On Monday, March 9th, we are organizing the first meeting with the representatives of the civil society and State Audit Institution (SAI), two actors who, in our opinion, have similar goal but different methods of achieving it.

The working title of the meeting is “Cooperation between the civil society and State Audit Institution – Together on the same task”.

The idea is that we as the representatives of the civil society, who monitor various areas of the public administration, point out to the representatives of SAI what should be their priority in the following period of time as well as which institutions or public policies should be the subjected to their control.

SAI is currently working on its communication strategy, so this will be a useful opportunity to talk with them about steps which they should take in the nest period in order to improve the cooperation with the civil society organizations (CSO), media and public relations.

The event objectives:

  • To meet the civil society organizations with the role of the SAI in the system of the control of the public finances,
  • To meet representatives of SAI with the work of most active CSOs and the areas of the public administration that they consider as the most problematic, in order to draw attention of the of the State auditors to those issues,
  • That SAI gains information from the CSOs which could be useful in further formulating or amending the Annual Audit plan,
  • To introduce new elements for the future communication strategy for SAI.

What do we expect from the representatives of SAI:

  • To present the work and the role of the SAI to the representative of the CSO,
  • To present the way how SAI chooses who will be subjected to the audit,
  • To present the work on the communication strategy of SAI and changes they would like to see in their relation to media, NGOs and the public.

What do we expect from the representatives of the civil society:

  • To suggest which spending units or public policies should be the center of the attention of SAI in the next period,
  • To suggest what should SAI do in order to strengthen the cooperation between the CSO and media (to suggest elements for the communication strategy of SAI),
  • To present their experiences in the use of reports of SAI and to suggest ideas for monitoring recommendations.

For all additional information about the event, please contact Marko Sošić, the project coordinator, via e-mail address marko@institut-alternativa.org or phone number 067 239 807.

The meeting is the part of the project “Together towards accountability – strengthening the impact of the state audit in Montenegro”. The goal of the project is to increase the level of the implementation of SAI’s recommendations, as well as strengthening ties with between the SAI and the Parliament of Montenegro, civil society organizations and internal auditors in the public sector.

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Press Release: Necessary to Increase Trust in the Police

Human resources management, weak police internal control and the politicization of the police are common regional problems and solving them is fundamental for strengthening police integrity, participants concluded at the panel discussion on police accountability in the Western Balkans.

Police in the region are facing similar problems such as the politicization of the police or corruption in employment, it was pointed out at the debate in the Media Centre in Belgrade, organized by the regional network of civil society organizations POINTPULSE on Friday, February 27th 2015.

The main motive behind creating the regional POINTPULSE network is the fact that the trust in the police is below the world average of 60% to 90%, as emphasized by Saša Đorđević, the researcher from Belgrade Center for Security Policy. Trust in the Serbian police is 35%, which is a 5% increase when compared to the previous year, but less than in 2011 and 2012. In Bosnia and Herzegovina the trust in this institution is 55%, in Montenegro 44% and in Kosovo it is 43%. This is all below the world average, explained Đorđević.

The police efficiency is not only based on statistics but also on citizens’ trust in the police and whether they feel protected, which together raises the question of the police accountability, said Đorđević and pointed out that the newly announced Law on Police in Serbia should solve some of the problems.

“Draft Law on Police has its good and bad sides. Human resource management is improved because the specific criteria for promotion are listed and competition for jobs is provided. It is not good that the Minister of Interior continues to appoint and dismiss Heads of regional police departments. If so remains, the politicization of the police will continue to be a problem”, concluded Đorđević.

“Citizens in Bosnia and Herzegovina have quite a lot of trust in the Police, but only 20-25% of citizens have confidence in the judiciary. The situation with the Police is satisfying due to the complex constitutional structure in which work 22 police departments that are quite independent”, said Denis Hadžović, Secretary general of the Centre for Security Studies in Sarajevo.

Hadžović said that the laws regulating this field are good, but that problems are faced during its implementation. In the past year, 67% of citizens have witnessed bribing of traffic police, while 57% of them believe that there is corruption in employment, and that the most corrupted part of the police in Bosnia and Herzegovina are director of the police or minister, underlined Hadžović.

Majority of Montenegrin citizens,72 %, believe that corruption is ubiquitous, says Dina Bajramspahić, the researcher of the Institute Alternative from Podgorica.

“It is well known that corruption in Montenegro is one of the biggest problems, as well as the relation between organized crime and political structures. The problem of the police politicization is also large because the state is the biggest employer in the country, where recruiting is done without merit criteria and with frequent and unexplained shifts. Because of that, it is necessary to strengthen the control of the property cards of police officers”, underlined Bajramspahić. Another policing problem in Montenegro is the large number of police officers. The EU Member States employ an average of 300 police officers per 100,000 citizens, while in Montenegro this number is 808.

Bajramspahić emphasized that the particularly problematic area is the fact that Police in Montenegro is not encouraged for the fight against corruption, considering the fact that the persons behind the attacks on the police officers have not been discovered

Plator Avdiu, researcher from the Kosovo Center for Security Studies in Pristina, believes that it is necessary to strengthen the fight against the corruption in the Police, especially regarding the public procurement where the money is being spent outside of legal procedures and regulations.

“The politicization, nepotism and public procurement are three main risks of corruption in the police in Kosovo,” said Avdiu. He added that the Kosovo police are the youngest institution in Europe, since it was developed only in the last 15 years. However, the Police forces are among the oldest, if the average age of police officers is taken into account. This problem should be solved through the adoption of the new Law on Early Retirement of Police Officers, which would enable the police forces of Kosovo to rejuvenate itself through the retirement of about 1,000 police officers from the service and employing the same number of younger ones, said Avdiu.

The problem that the researchers have noticed as common is the fact that the state is not encouraging the police to responsibly do their part of work when it comes to the fight against the corruption.

The event is organized within the project “Western Balkans Pulse for Police Integrity and Trust – POINTPULSE” which is supported by the European Union through Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA) programme Civil Society Facility. Project is jointly implemented by five organizations – Belgrade Center for Security Police (BCSP) and Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) from Belgrade, Center for Security Studies (CSS) from Sarajevo, Institute Alternative (IA) from Podgorica and Kosovar Center for Security Studies (KCSS) from Priština.

You can follow project activities by Twitter using #BalkanCops and #POINTPULSE.