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.

In a statement, the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation reported that 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.”

The Mozura wind farm project has faced a lot of scrutiny in Malta due to alleged underhand dealings which have recently been brought to light through an investigation by Reuters and Times of Malta which showed that 17 Black, the Dubai company owned by Yorgen Fenech, made a profit in December 2015 of €4.6 million from Enemalta's purchase of a windfarm in Montenegro.

 

This was a month after the government announced that it was acquiring the project through Enemalta.

The deadline for conducting the inquiry is 120 days from the day the decision on the parliamentary inquiry enters into force.