Montenegro parliament votes to open inquiry into Mozura wind farm project

Montenegro’s parliament has voted to form an Inquiry Committee to investigate the Mozura wind farm project, which has been implicated in corruption allegations from the outset. Branka Bošnjak, the Vice-President of the Assembly said the investigation is motivated by “the fact that this is a major international corruption scandal” and that “there is very important evidence of multimillion-dollar corruption in the project, which will additionally cost the state 115 million euros through a subsidised electricity contract for 12 years”.

Malta’s former prime minister Joseph Muscat and former energy minister Konrad Mizzi had struck a deal with Montenegro in 2015. On 18 November 2019, Muscat officially opened the Mozura wind farm with Montenegro’s then prime minister, Dusko Markovic. After yesterday’s vote in Montenegro for a parliamentary inquiry into the project, Bošnjak said, “the Government of Montenegro and other competent authorities did not take measures, actions and activities that according to the Constitution and the law were obliged to be undertaken in the protection of state property. On the contrary, it is suspected that they were part of this corrupt business.”

Offshore companies Cifidex Ltd and 17 Black Ltd are at the centre of a corrupt deal involving state-owned Enemalta plc’s purchase of the Mozura wind farm. SOCAR’s Turab Musayev, who represented Azerbaijan’s interest in Electrogas Malta Ltd., used Cifidex, a Seychelles company, to buy 99 per cent of the shares in Montenegro’s Mozura wind farm for €2.9m in 2015. Two weeks later, Musayev used the same offshore company to sell the shares to Enemalta plc for €10.3m. Cifidex purchased the wind farm shares with €3m borrowed from 17 Black Ltd. After Cifidex sold the shares to Enemalta, the offshore company repaid the €3m to 17 Black plus an additional €4.6m “profit share”.

The deadline for conducting the inquiry is one hundred and twenty days from the day the Decision on the parliamentary inquiry enters into force.