Corruption investigation against Montenegro Airlines widens
During last week, police in Montenegro seized documents from the national carrier’s head office in Podgorica in an ongoing corruption investigation. The seized documents relate to the way Montenegro Airlines has debited airport taxes since 1994 until 2009. Furthermore, police is checking whether a newly purchased company car was bought legally by the airline. It is not the first time that the carrier and its management have come under investigation for corruption. Montenegro Airlines’ management is also being investigated for the way it set up its planned Serbian subsidiary, Master Airways, in Niš. In addition, the company is being scrutinised for the lease of a Fokker F100 to the now defunct Albatros Airways from Albania several years ago. The latest investigation comes days after Montenegro Airlines’ CEO, Zoran Djurišić, slammed the government for attempting to privatise the airline.“Montenegro Airlines has no secrets and all of the business decisions it makes are in accordance to regulations and the law”, the airline said in a press release late last evening. “Over the past week, the premises of Montenegro Airlines were visited by police under the orders of the State Prosecutor. The police were interested in specific activities that have taken place in the company concerning regular company business”, the airline says. However, much of the carrier’s business performance is unknown to the general public. Until this year, the public was unaware of the airline’s mounting losses nor has the airline revealed how many passengers it has carried. Montenegro Airlines has also kept quiet the news that it is no longer a member of the Association of European Airlines. Admitted into the group of over thirty carriers in January 2010, it has been suddenly dumped without any official explanation.
Last week, the company Airports of Montenegro accused its main customer for failing to forward airport taxes for Podgorica and Tivat airports (included in the ticket price). It says that, as a result, its business has lost 8.3 million Euros.
Damn, I am flying them tomorrow!
ReplyDeleteunrelated.
ReplyDeleteCCAA finally published pax results for September: 241.575 pax for LDZA, which is a 13% growth compared to 09/2010. The average annual growth so far for LDZA is 14% - just enough to hold on the step until new terminal gets done and Croatia enteres the EU. We should see an average of 10% increase each year all the way through 2016. :)
Indeed a good result for LDZA,but we should not too much count
ReplyDeleteon EU-membership.When you see what currently is going on in Europe
then I doubt that everything will
go as planned.Croatia should in every case pursue a plan B!
The investigation against the management of Montenegro airlines is no surprise. Everybody knows that the police there is guided by
the ruling party.
All the years nobody had any problem with what was going on, corruption was not only ignored it was backed by the government from the very beginning!
But you can not be member of the gang if you criticize the leaders,
so the CEO will get punished.
Also a good opportunity to have a scapegoat and blame him for everything. Not that he does not deserve it!