A Chinese company was fined 200,000 euros for destroying Tara

The Chinese company China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) has to pay around 200,000 euros for the destruction of fish and other wildlife in the Tara River during the construction of the Bar-Boljare highway, the Basic Court in Podgorica ruled, confirmed the court to Radio Free Europe (RSE). ).

CRBC is the main contractor for the construction of the 41-kilometer section of the highway, which lasts six and a half years and which, according to the latest announcements, should be completed by the end of the year. Part of the work took place in the area of the Tara River, whose canyon has been under UNESCO protection since 1977.

The Chinese company was sued by the Sports Fishing Association "Tara and Morača", which in April 2018 signed an agreement with the Ministry of Agriculture on the use and management of this natural asset in the municipality of Kolašin.

"We were mostly obstructed by those who were supposed to protect the Tara River," the president of the company, Momir Zivkovic, told RFE / RL, adding that the lawsuit was therefore bitter.

"Even some people from state bodies testified in favor of CRBC at the trial, even though there were papers signed by their officials, about what I stated and documented with audio and video material," says Zivkovic.

He adds that they did not have undivided support and understanding in their environment.

"We are not satisfied with the fact that some of our people from Montenegro and Kolašin treated it as if the river was not ours, as if our children and their children did not need it. They thought that the Chinese were right, and I say - people, this is Tara, about our good and the city of Kolasin ", says Zivkovic.

CRBC did not want to comment on the court's decision, but confirmed to RSE that they would file an appeal.

The previously done damage is now being repaired, they say in the Ministry

The Kolasin fishermen were awarded compensation of 34,500 euros for the destruction of river wildlife, 60,750 euros for the lost natural growth of fish, and 87,600 euros for non-issuance of fishing permits due to the death of fish and other aquatic organisms. The defendant is also obliged to reimburse court costs of 4,700 euros, it is stated in the first instance verdict.

The Minister of Ecology, Spatial Planning and Urbanism, Ratko Mitrović, did not specifically answer RFE / RL's question about the verdict, as well as the numerous accusations of environmental damage that accompanied the construction of the highway.

"We have been here (in the ministry) for less than a year, and the highway should have been completed a year or so ago. Everything that happened, mostly happened before, now there are some final stages of construction when what was done is literally repaired. We are now looking at how much can be done at this stage, "Mitrovic told RFE / RL.

Until a year ago, the Ministry of Sustainable Development of the previous government, the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), was in charge of controlling the environmental segment of highway construction.

Now that department is under the jurisdiction of Mitrovic's ministry, which was elected to that position at the beginning of December 2020, after the Democratic Front, Democrats and the civic movement URA together won the majority in the August parliamentary elections, and the DPS joined the opposition.

Otherwise, the works on the highway are controlled by the Monteputo Commission, the companies of the Government of Montenegro and the French-Italian consortium Ingerop-Geodata.

The construction of the first section of the highway is accompanied by numerous accusations from the civil sector about the violation of ecological and natural resources of the Tara River, which is under the protection of the UNESCO program "Man and the Biosphere".

In 2018, the non-governmental organization MANS (Network for the Affirmation of the Non-Governmental Sector) published drone footage which indicated that the riverbed had been changed in the Mateševo area near Kolašin, where a highway is being built.

Then, UNESCO 2019 stated in its report that the riverbed was devastated in the construction zone of the highway, and after the inspection finding that it was deepened in the area of the Tara 2 bridge, in August 2021, it was announced that CRBC would repair it.

At the beginning of March, the Basic State Prosecutor's Office in Kolašin filed an indictment against CRBC for construction without documentation and damage to the environment.

Other complaints against the CRBC are expected to be reviewed in the civil sector

If this verdict becomes final, it will in no way absolve CRBC or any of its subcontractors from responsibility for everything that was done during the construction of the highway, Dejan Milovac from MANS told RSE.

"We are talking about a private lawsuit of an organization, and this awarded damage, if it becomes final, should in no way represent the satisfaction of justice in the legal and material sense when it comes to what we have had the opportunity to witness in the last six years. this section is being built ", says Milovac.

He reminds that MANS filed two criminal charges in 2018 and 2019 against CRBC for the same reasons, due to large-scale environmental pollution, but both were rejected by the current prosecutor's office. However, he believes that this is not the end, and that these and other reports will be a test for a new prosecution.

"I hope that in addition to this verdict, which is now invalid, we will have to expect others in the coming period, and it will be a test for the prosecution and other proceedings ex officio when it comes to the devastation of the Tara River, but also other parts of nature that are found themselves on the route of this section ", Milovac expects.

The lawyer of the Tara and Morača Sports Fishing Association, Vladimir Čadjenović, believes that inspections and other instances have failed regarding the protection of Tara, and recalls the words of former Minister of Sustainable Development and Tourism Pavle Radulović, who said that there were over 117 incidents on Tara.

"Now inspections and the prosecutor's office have been launched, but it mostly came from us, through our efforts," said Cadjenovic.

It takes years to recover the river

The club's documentation collected in the field states that untreated cement and wastewater flowed into Tara, that the river was muddy every day, and that there were large spills of concrete and feces, says Zivkovic and estimates that it will take years for Tara to recover.

"There are no fish now, and according to expert and professional estimates, it will take at least five to ten years for biodiversity to recover, from which fish could live. It is that plant world which is found in rivers, and is destroyed because a great deal of material has been extracted from it for the needs of the road; they did it at night, but we documented it all. About ten meters away were the holes from which they extracted the material. But, whatever the money is, it will be used for restocking the river ", says Živković.

But apart from the ecological, the economic dimension of road construction was also problematic.

For the construction of the 41-kilometer section of the highway, the state borrowed from the Chinese EXIM bank for 809 million dollars for a period of twenty years, and then for an additional 90 million, which is the cost of building access roads.

The first installment of the loan of around 28 million euros was paid by the Government on July 21 this year, after the Ministry of Finance concluded a hedging arrangement in order to protect the Montenegrin public debt from currency risk with two American and two European banks.