For over two years, we have been awaiting a response from the Government regarding the distribution of the budget reserve during the term of the 41st Government, only to finally be informed that the documentation has been destroyed
Files detailing how the Government Commission for the distribution of funds from the budget reserve distributed money to individuals and legal entities during the period 2016-2019 has been destroyed. According to the response received from the General Secretariat of the Government, decisions on fund allocation, minutes from the sessions, reports, and conclusions of the Commission for the distribution of funds from the budget reserve during 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 have all been destroyed “in accordance with archival regulations”.
We requested this documentation in July 2021 (after receiving part of the documentation for 2020), and the response came two years later, in October 2023. In the brief response from the General Secretariat of the Government, we were told when this documentation was destroyed. According to the categories of archival material of the General Secretariat of the Government of Montenegro, reports, minutes, and decisions of Government commissions are to be retained for a period of five years. At the time we requested the documentation, these deadlines had not expired.
Based on the documentation we previously received for 2020, the Inner Cabinet of the Government approved a payment of around 700,000 EUR for 523 individuals in amounts ranging from 100 EUR to 30,000 EUR in just one session. Now, the documentation for previous years has been lost.
Our recommendation to the new Government, which the previous ones rejected, is to suspend the mechanism of distributing money to individuals and legal entities under the guise of assistance by non-transparent bodies such as the Inner Cabinet and the Government Commission.
