Media reported that the Prosecutor’s office of Montenegro began checking the largest arms exporting country — the company MDI (Montenegro Defence Industry). She is suspected of illicit arms and ammunition. This information was published by Balkan Insight, citing the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN).
The result, as stated, check the so-called end-user certificates — the documents certifying that the sold weapons reached the buyer, and was not smuggled to another country. The head of the MDI Zoran Damjanovic categorically denies all charges.
The investigation started at the request of the opposition Deputy nebojša Medovich, who argues that the MDI with the knowledge of a number in power of politicians has supplied weapons to militants in the middle East. The basis of his version went to the official figures of sales of arms to Saudi Arabia. According to them, Montenegro only for the year 2016 was sold to the Saudis 132 tons of weapons totaling more than a million dollars. For the previous years put Podgorica to Riyadh antitank “Zola”, and over 250 tons of ammunition, including mines for mortars. Basically we are talking about sales of weapons of the Yugoslav people’s Army, held in stock and the rest in Montenegro after the partition of the country.
BIRN indicates that these samples never entered service with the Saudi army, which uses mostly arms of Western origin. But machine guns and anti-tank systems with Yugoslav markings regularly flashed from Islamist militants in Syria, Libya and Yemen.
This is not the first scandal involving the sale of weapons from Montenegro. 5 November 2015 in Germany was arrested a Montenegrin — one Vlatko, V., — carrying in the trunk of the car Volkswagen eight Kalashnikovs, pistols, grenades, explosives and detonators. According to the detainee, he had to transfer cargo to the customer in Paris. A week later, on 13 November, in the French capital had committed a series of terrorist attacks. As a result of the terrorist attacks in cafes, restaurants, the stadium “Stade de France” and in the concert hall “Bataclan” killed 130 people, more than 350 were injured. The investigators believed that the weapons carried, Vlatko, intended for these attacks, but to prove it and failed.