Montenegro’s Basic Court in Podgorica has rejected former Monteput executive director Jonuz Mujević’s claim against the state, including a demand to annul his November 2021 dismissal and recover 51,791.32 euros in lost earnings. The court found the Government of Montenegro had authority to remove him before the end of his four-year appointment.
Mujević also sought 14,740.73 euros in accrued default interest and further interest until final payment. The new ruling, delivered by Judge Daliborka Vuksanović, rejected both the request to overturn the dismissal decision and the related compensation claim.
The Government appointed Mujević to lead Monteput, a state-owned company established by the Government as its sole shareholder, on 22 October 2020. He signed an employment contract on 29 October and was dismissed on 24 November 2021, before the four-year term for which he had been appointed expired.
The case returned to the Basic Court after the Higher Court on 17 March 2026 quashed an earlier judgment in full and ordered reconsideration of the founder’s legal powers, the effect of the four-year term and severance payments. In December 2025, the Basic Court had initially upheld Mujević’s requests to annul his dismissal and award compensation with related claims.
Mandate and dismissal powers
Mujević argued that the Government had changed Monteput’s founding act and adopted a new statute that reduced the executive director’s term to one year, creating a basis for his early removal. He also challenged the Government’s authority to adopt the statute and the legality of the reasoning in his dismissal decision, which said his one-year term had expired.
The court found that, as founder of the single-member company, the Government was entitled to adopt its statute and dismiss its executive director before the end of a term. It said Article 302, paragraph 1, of the Law on Business Companies did not require a special reason for such a dismissal and that the company’s relevant acts did not restrict that power.
Although the new statute could not automatically shorten Mujević’s previously set four-year mandate, the court concluded that this did not make his dismissal unlawful. Judge Vuksanović wrote that setting the term “cannot be equated with restricting the statutory power to end it early.” The ruling also said the reference to an expired one-year term “was not a necessary legal condition” for the validity of the dismissal.
Monteput’s statute was amended again in April 2022 to set the executive director’s term at four years. The court concluded that this later change, on its own, did not establish that Mujević’s earlier dismissal was unlawful.
The employment contract set his basic net salary at 1,800 euros a month and provided that, after dismissal by the Government, he could request reassignment to another suitable position or receive severance equivalent to 24 contracted net salaries. Mujević requested severance two days after his dismissal. Monteput paid him 58,392.96 euros in severance and 7,188.35 euros for unused annual leave on 6 December 2021.
The court stressed that its rejection of the damages claim was not based on Mujević having received severance. It noted that Monteput paid that sum, while the defendant in the civil case was the state, and said choosing severance “does not necessarily amount to waiving judicial protection” against the dismissal. The court found no unlawful dismissal or other specific wrongful conduct had been established, leaving no basis for the damages liability Mujević sought.
