Agency for Prevention of Corruption

The State Prosecutor of the Republic of Italy - Catello Maresca spoke on the topic of the improvement of the protection of whistle-blowers under the IPA projects, jointly implemented by the Montenegrin and Italian Agency for Prevention of Corruption

A roundtable was organised in order to exchange good practices between the representatives of the Montenegrin and Italian institutions in the field of application of legal provisions on the protection of whistle-blowers and continued efficient institutional co-operation between the two countries in the fight against corruption.
June 7, 2018

Improvement of the protection of whistle-blowers under the IPA projects, jointly implemented by the Montenegrin and Italian Agency for Prevention of Corruption

The Agency for Prevention of Corruption, in co-operation with the Italian National Anti-Corruption Authority (ANAC) organised, on June 4th in Hilton hotel, a roundtable on the topic of "Promotion of the application of the legal provisions in the protection of whistle-blowers" under the IPA 2014 twining project "Support to the implementation of integrity measures". The meeting was organised in order to exchange good practices from the Italian and Montenegrin legislation in the field of protection of whistle-blowers and, in particular, to familiarise the representative of the two Prosecutor’s Offices with the existing regulations in this domain.

In addition to the representatives of the Agency and the ANAC, the roundtable was attended by the State Prosecutor of the Republic of Italy – Catello Maresca, the Council of Europe’s expert Francesco Clementucci, as well as the representatives of the Supreme State Prosecutor's Office of Montenegro and Basic State Prosecutor's Office of Montenegro in order to familiarise the representatives of the relevant Montenegrin institutions with the best practices in the EU when it comes to the treatment of the reports submitted by whistle-blowers. In her opening speech, the audience was addressed by the ANAC expert, Ms. Sonja Levstik and the project leader in Montenegro and the representative of the Agency Mr. Mladen Tomović, who presented the results of the Agency since its establishment until the beginning of June 2018, in relation to the reports of whistle-blowers which were transferred to the relevant Prosecutor’s Offices. On this occasion, Tomović reminded that the Agency, since the beginning of its work, out of the total number of reports (171 reports of whistle-blowers and 33 proceedings initiated ex officio), 22 reports were submitted to the relevant Prosecutor’s Offices: 11 to the Special State Prosecutor’s Office, 10 to the Basic State Prosecutor’s Office and 1 report to the High State Prosecutor’s Office. In terms of the outcomes of these procedures, so far 11 reports have been rejected, 5 are in the investigation phase, 1 resulted in the pronunciation of a sentence of imprisonment of 90 days coupled with a suspended sentence, 1 resulted in an indictment motion, while for the remaining four, we await feedback. When it comes to the anonymity of reports forwarded to Prosecutor’s Offices, in 6 cases whistle-blowers wanted to remain anonymous, while in the remaining 16 the identity of those whistle-blowers is known.

The State Prosecutor of the Republic of Italy Mr. Maresca, presented the principles of prosecution in the Italian practice and a series of concrete examples of good practice of joint activities of the ANAC and relevant Prosecutor’s Offices when it comes to whistle-blowers’ reports. After the mentioned presentations, the participants initiated a discussion on the prosecution system in Montenegro in terms of corruption and the relation of state prosecutors with the ANAC and further mechanisms of improvement of the institutional co-operation between Montenegro and Italy in the field of processing whistle-blowers’ reports and their protection. Also, the emphasis was placed on the provisions of the Law on Protection of Whistle-blowers and challenges in the improvement of this legal mechanism and, in particular, in the protection of the identity of whistle-blowers.

The second and the third day of the mission, specifically on June 5th and 6th, the representatives of the Agency and the ANAC met with representatives of the Police Administration, the Protector of Human Rights and Freedoms of Montenegro, as well as with the representatives of the Agency for Protection of Competition, also in order to further improve the institutional co-operation and more efficiently implement the provisions on the protection of whistle-blowers.

The Agency for Prevention of Corruption is the beneficiary the IPA 2014 twining project “Support to the implementation of integrity measures”, which is implemented with the Italian National Anti-Corruption Authority (ANAC) as the partner institution from the EU.

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