Montenegrin Prime Minister Milojko Spajić apologized to the citizens of Montenegro for spending his summer in the elite French resort of Saint Tropez and announced that he went there at his own expense, not at the expense of the state.
At an extraordinary press conference in Podgorica, Spajić said that certain criminal circles, through social networks, are continuously campaigning against him and his team and assessed that this issue “should be the subject of the attention of the security services”.
The Montenegrin Prime Minister spoke out after a series of negative articles about his summer vacation in Saint Tropez, criticism of the relationship with important state bodies and the way state policy is conducted, and alleged connections with dubious owners of companies that trade crypto currencies.
Certain media previously published a series of negative texts, relying predominantly on posts on social networks, about Spajić’s stay in Saint Tropez.
They criticized his failure to attend the session of the Security and Defense Council, which was scheduled for August 20 by his former party colleague, now political rival, President Jakov Milatović, and linked it to his stay in the French Modena resort.
“I paid for the trip with my own money, the government plane was not used, that will be easy to see. “I did not spend a single cent of the national team while I was prime minister,” Spajić said.
He justified the gesture of apology in a populist way, stating that he was apologizing for spending four days on vacation in Saint Tropez “which many citizens cannot afford” and then continued by promising to work for a better standard of citizens.
The Prime Minister also referred to the allegations of his recent party colleague and Minister of Justice, Andrej Milović, who earlier today, ahead of Spajić’s announced press conference, made the claim that Spajić was connected to the convicted British billionaire George Kortel.
The authorities in Montenegro at one time linked an illegal crypto machine in Tivat with Kortel, and political opponents of PES claimed before last year’s elections that a rich Briton, former adviser to Nigel Farage, former British MP and ardent supporter of Brexit, was financing Spajic’s Europe Now Movement (PES). .
Spajić denied that he was financed by Cottrell and repeated that PES took out a loan to finance the election campaign.
“It is interesting that the former minister did not talk about these things while he was in the government,” Spajić added and called on the prosecution to check the accusations against him.
He also denied the allegations that he did not respond to the call for the Security Council session because he was going to France and said that due to “urgent obligations” he asked for other dates for the session. In this context, he mentioned the memory of his father and the probate process, and he also had a reason of a political nature, namely that, as he claims, the president of the state did not sign the decision on the appointment of the Army of Montenegro, which the Council should consider.
Spajić claimed that the target of the campaign is two criminal circles that are “behind some of the accounts on social networks, some influential Twitter users” who follow him and indirectly called on the security services to pay attention to it.
“It is an issue that should be the subject of the attention of the security services”, added the Montenegrin Prime Minister and clarified that the security issue is “if someone can take photos of politicians abroad”, and that “it is justified to think about whether they could do something else as well.”
He claims that these criminal circles support the former ruling party, the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), and at least one other political party, refusing to specify which.
