State-owned transport companies in Montenegro are exploiting legal loopholes to misuse severance payments, according to a new report by BIRN Montenegro titled “Monitoring the Spending of State-Owned Transport Companies.” The eight-month monitoring covered the financial operations of eight state-owned enterprises: Airports of Montenegro, ToMontenegro, Monteput, Montecargo, Port of Bar, Port of Kotor, Crnogorska Plovidba and Barska Plovidba.
Jelena Mitrović, Programme Manager at BIRN Montenegro, said the monitoring revealed gaps in the Labour Law that can be abused when determining severance packages and their amounts. She explained that the law does not prescribe a maximum severance payment, leaving room for manipulation. According to Mitrović, the vague regulation of mutual employment termination agreements enables companies to award disproportionately high severance sums through internal decisions — often raising concerns about political influence in such arrangements. The same applies, she said, to severance payments granted to former politically appointed managers.
The research found that state-owned companies spent more than €1.3 million on severance payments, while over €1.2 million went to donations and sponsorships — with Port of Bar alone accounting for more than €830,000. Mitrović added that a troubling pattern was observed in the disclosure of executive salaries: only Montecargo, Crnogorska Plovidba and Port of Kotor provided payroll data, while Port of Bar and ToMontenegro referred BIRN to public registers of the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption instead of supplying full documentation.
BIRN Montenegro’s Executive Director, Vuk Maraš, noted that Montecargo, Port of Kotor and Crnogorska Plovidba were the only companies that submitted all requested documentation. Although ToMontenegro responded positively to all requests, it declared its employment contracts confidential. Monteput supplied only part of the required documents — and did so after the research had already been completed — while Port of Bar delivered only aggregated figures for spending on official payment cards instead of detailed bank statements.
Port of Bar also refused to submit records on hospitality services, hotel accommodation, consultancy and legal fees, and airline ticket expenses, categorizing all such data as business secrets. Meanwhile, Airports of Montenegro did not respond to any of BIRN’s requests, forcing researchers to rely solely on publicly available registers from the Tax Administration and the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption.
According to BIRN’s findings, the eight companies generated more than €824 million in revenue over the past seven years, with expenses exceeding €555 million. Salary costs, allowances and other personnel-related expenses totalled over €259 million, while the combined net financial result amounted to more than €32 million. During this period, the average number of employees increased by one third — from 1,746 in 2018 to 2,346 in 2024. Excluding ToMontenegro, which was founded in 2021, the remaining seven companies still recorded a steady increase in employment to 2,179 staff.
Only two companies — Montecargo and Port of Bar — provided documents regarding housing loans and grants, awarding a total of 91 housing loans worth more than €450,000. Barska Plovidba, ToMontenegro, Crnogorska Plovidba and Port of Kotor reported that they did not issue housing assistance during the monitoring period.
On employment practices, four companies — Montecargo, Port of Bar, Crnogorska Plovidba and Port of Kotor — submitted employment contracts, collectively signing 481 contracts, of which 350 were concluded by Port of Bar. Barska Plovidba reported that it had not signed any employment contracts during the period.
Five companies — ToMontenegro, Montecargo, Port of Bar, Crnogorska Plovidba and Port of Kotor — provided data on temporary service contracts, signing a total of 1,275 such agreements, including 1,061 by Port of Bar alone. Additionally, three companies — ToMontenegro, Montecargo and Port of Bar — submitted documentation on contracts signed via employment agencies, totalling 1,335 agreements, with Port of Bar responsible for 1,307 of them. Monteput, Port of Kotor, Barska Plovidba and Crnogorska Plovidba said they had not entered into any agency-mediated contracts.
