Two and a half thousand residents of the Grblja district, located between Budva and Kotor, wrote an angry letter to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, in which they said that they would not peacefully watch him deprive them of “the source of life and survival.”
This reaction arose among local residents after they learned about the plans of the Montenegrin authorities to transfer two popular beaches of Ploce and Trsteno to the rich.
Ploce beach
“Our position is clear, we stand for our own and believe that no one but ourselves can own a single inch of our coastline,” the Grbli residents say in the letter. “As residents of this area who want good neighborly relations, we must emphasize that we will use all legal and democratic means to protect our rights.”
It is known that Oleg Deripaska has already built a complex of premium villas in this area, but the oligarch’s hands have only now reached the beaches. At the moment, the state-owned company Morsko Dobro Crne Gore has announced tenders for the lease of these beaches, to which the Russian oligarch, according to the Montenegrins, responds with “fabulous offers.”
Trsteno beach
As a PolitNavigator correspondent reports, Deripaska has had a bad reputation among the residents of Montenegro since the moment when he owned the Podgorica Aluminum Plant from 2005 to 2009.
Having received a loan guaranteed by the Montenegrin government of 132 million euros, after the 2008 crisis he did not repay it, and the burden fell on the shoulders of all residents of the country. By the way, the entire budget of this state at that time did not reach two billion euros.
Let us recall that in July the regime of Milo Djukanovic, contrary to the will of the people accommodated the opposition mayor of Budva Marko “Bato” Tsarevich, one of Deripaska’s main opponents, who did not allow him to buy city land for the construction of luxury hotels.
After the municipal coup, people began to say that in this way the Montenegrin authorities were liberating territories for Deripaska.
At the same time, the Russian oligarch is not at all interested in the openly pro-Western, anti-Russian and anti-Orthodox nature of the Montenegrin regime.