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· Montenegro
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Jump to full article: Financial Times (uk), 2010-12-21
Author: Neil MacDonald in Belgrade
Intro: Montenegro’s prime minister, Milo Djukanovic, resigned on Tuesday in a move expected to advance his tiny Balkan country’s efforts to join the European Union.
He designated as his successor Igor Luksic, the 34-year-old finance minister, a technocrat seen as untainted by the corruption prevailing since the 1990s. . . .
During the 1990s, when Mr Milosevic’s Serbia was under international economic sanctions, Montenegro became a base for smuggling across the Adriatic to Italy. This included the lucrative export of cigarettes without customs stamps into the EU market.
Mr Djukanovic invoked diplomatic immunity to avoid prosecution in Italy, where he had been indicted for 1990s cigarette smuggling.
By his own admission, Montenegro relied on irregular business to resist Belgrade’s control. The cigarette trade never broke local laws, only becoming illegal on entry to the EU, and he never personally profited, he told the Financial Times.
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