This year, the Basic State Prosecutor’s Office in Podgorica opened 27 cases regarding applications related to fake diplomas, reports the RTCG portal from the Supreme State Prosecutor’s Office.
The existence of fake diplomas is one of the most important problems faced by Montenegro, and that the depoliticization of personnel must be carried out as a matter of urgency in order to face this problem, the interviewees of the “Okvir” show on TVCG recently assessed.
In the show, it was said that the estimate is that there are at least 20,000 fake or dubious diplomas in Montenegro, and the responsibility, as they say, lies with all institutions, not only the Ministry of Education.
The VDT told Portal RTCG that indictments were filed in six cases.
“We inform you that 27 cases have been opened in the Basic State Prosecutor’s Office in Podgorica since the beginning of 2023 in connection with reports related to fake diplomas. In six cases, indictments have been filed, four cases have been transferred to other prosecutors’ offices, while in 17 cases the reconnaissance is still in progress”, it was specified in the answers.
About 70 reports related to fake diplomas have been submitted to the prosecutor’s office, Minister of Education, Science and Innovation Anđela Jakšić Stojanović said last week on Vijesti Television.
The scandal was initiated by the case of Miljana Pavličić, assistant director of the Institute of Public Health, who was found to have falsified her diploma, which is why the institution sent all employees to have their diplomas checked.
A criminal complaint was filed against Pavličić back in 2013, after it was determined that the diploma from the Faculty of Chemistry in Belgrade was a forgery.
The Ministry of Education reported that they never passed a decision on the recognition of a foreign educational document in the name of Miljana Pavličić. After obtaining all relevant information, the ministry submitted a criminal complaint against Pavličić to the competent prosecutor’s office.
The director of the Institute, Igor Galić, resigned and called on the authorities to initiate procedures for checking the diplomas of all employees in that institution.
The vice-president of PZP and professor at the University of Montenegro, Branka Bošnjak, has been warning for a long time that the Ministry of Education lightly nostrifies purchased diplomas and that annually more than 5,000 diplomas are submitted for nostrification, which is an unrealistic figure.
She claims that there are such fake diplomas at the top of the Government as well.
“Unfortunately, drivers, security guards, hygienists, hairdressers and the like graduated from us, and it is not rare that some of them, at the suggestion of their ruling parties, quickly became managers in state and local companies, state bodies, even though they are the leaders of those parties very aware of how their personnel got their diplomas. It is a premeditated murder of our state by those who were elected to take care of the public interest,” she said.
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