Over the course of eight months, BIRN Montenegro monitored the spending of eight state-owned transport companies – Airports of Montenegro, the national airline ToMontenegro, Monteput, Montecargo, the ports of Bar and Kotor, as well as Crnogorska Plovidba and Barska Plovidba.
BIRN Montenegro’s Programme Manager, Jelena Mitrovic, said that legal gaps in Labour Law give company managements broad discretion in determining severance payment amounts.
“This enables companies, through internal acts and decisions, to award amounts significantly higher than those prescribed by law, which may suggest a political background to the signed agreements on voluntary termination of employment,” Mitrovic said.
The BIRN report showed that state companies spent more than 1.3 million euros on severance payments, while more than 1.2 million euros was spent on donations and sponsorships.
BIRN Montenegro’s Executive Director, Vuk Maras, said that only three companies provided all the requested documentation, while some submitted incomplete data.
“Monteput submitted part of the documentation only after BIRN concluded its research, while Luka Bar classified a portion of the requested documents as a business secret,” Maras said.
BIRN Montenegro analyzed over 1.400 datasets, spanning over 6.000 pages of documents, which resulted in creation of a database with more than 9.000 entries. It is available at https://birn.me/projekti/izvjestaj-o-monitoringu-potrosnje-sredstava-od-strane-regulatornih-i-drugih-subjekata-od-posebnog-znacaja/