Two former ministers, former state secretary arrested in Montenegro

Within the framework of today's Special State Prosecutor and Montenegro Special Police Department, former Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Milutin Simovic has also been arrested.

From 2016 to 2020, Milutin Simovovic was Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development and Deputy Prime Minister at the time that Dusko Markovic was Montenegro's prime minister.

Ivanovi was arrested in a house in Doljani, and numerous police officers are searching the villa, property and vineyard owned by the former agriculture minister.

The same operation has also arrested former State Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development Nemanja Katniq.

He has also been arrested by PSP officers at the order of the SDSM.

Petar Ivanovic has been Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development from 2012 to 2016, while later working as representatives in the Assembly. From 2018 to May 2023, Ivanovic was economic adviser to former Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic.

At the end of October of this year, the Supreme Court confirmed the indictment of Abu Dhabi's fund link and judicial procedures in that case await the accused former agriculture ministers, Petar Ivanovic and Budimir Mogosha, whom the SDS accuse of misusing the case.

Zoran Vukchev, former head of the Investment and Development Fund (IRF), is also accused of unscrupulous service work.

Abu Dhabi Development Fund is a state agency of the United Arab Emirates, which in 2015 has extended a $50m loan to encourage agriculture in northern Montenegro. The DST Act charges them with criminal abuse of office between 2015 and 2017, while separating money from Abu Dhabi Fund loan.