Montenegro Ordered to Pay €4.5m in Shopping Mall Dispute

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg said in a judgment published on Tuesday that the state of Montenegro must compensate KIPS because the mayor of Podgorica, Miomir Mugosa, prevented it from building a shopping mall in the Stari Aerodrom district of the capital in 2005.

"The court holds that the respondent state is to pay 4,535,595 euros, within three months, in respect of pecuniary damages, plus any tax that may be chargeable," the court said.

It is the biggest-ever compensation payout handed down against the country.

The owner of the company, Risto Drekalovic, complained about interference with his property rights, the violation of the right to obtain a building permit, the length of the legal proceedings and the local government's failure to comply with court judgments.

Drekalovic appealed to the Strasbourg court after the Constitutional Court of Montenegro rejected his appeal as unfounded in 2007.

KIPS then opened a shopping mall in another location in Golubovci, near Podgorica.

Montenegro's representative at the rights court in Strasbourg, Valentina Pavlicic, said that the compensation was less than KIPS had requested because the company opened the other mall.

"As the Cievna mall in Golubovci was opened in late 2007, the European Court found that KIPS had suffered loss of profit only for the period 2006 and 2007," Pavlicic told media.

The opposition URA movement said that Mugosa should be held accountable for the compensation award "because he cost Podgorica millions of euros".

According to Pavlicic, the number of complaints against Montenegro that have been filed to the court in Strasbourg is increasing every year.

Pavlicic told parliament in October that there were 318 complaints from...