Svetozar Marovic prison sentence expires, lawyer says
Lawyer Zdravko Begovic says the statute of limitations on Marovic's three-and-a-half-year prison sentence ran out on October 10, but the Basic Court in Kotor must rule.
Svetozar Marovic (71), former president of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, reached the point today, October 10, 2026, at which the absolute statute of limitations applies to his three-and-a-half-year prison sentence for organized crime. His defense lawyer, Zdravko Begovic, confirmed it and says Marovic can enter Montenegro as early as next week without fear of arrest.
Begovic confirmed the expiry in statements to the media: N1 reports that he spoke to the Beta agency, while Danas says he spoke to Radio Television of Montenegro. A subheading in Danas says Marovic is free to enter Montenegro from Monday, which is October 12.
Which sentence expired, and who has to confirm it?
Begovic says ten years have passed since the ruling of the High Court in Podgorica and that this is the legal basis on which Marovic can return. For now, then, the picture rests on the word of his lawyer. The formal ruling establishing that the sentence has expired must come from the Basic Court in Kotor, and the sources do not say it has been issued yet.
As we reported earlier, the sentence was running out while Serbia did not respond to requests from Podgorica. According to the lawyer, that deadline has now closed.
How did Marovic end up with a three-and-a-half-year sentence?
Marovic, a former senior official of the Democratic Party of Socialists, was arrested in Budva in December 2015 on charges of multimillion-euro corruption and financial malpractice. After several months in custody, in 2016 he signed two plea agreements with Montenegro’s Special State Prosecutor’s Office. He admitted leading an organized criminal group that cost the Budva municipal budget millions of euros.
He was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. Along with the sentence, he was ordered to pay the state one million euros and another 100,000 euros for humanitarian purposes. After the verdict he went to Serbia, saying he needed psychiatric and cardiac treatment. Montenegro then sought his extradition so that he could serve the sentence.
What does Montenegro’s justice minister say about extradition?
Montenegrin Justice Minister Bojan Bozovic said recently that since 2019 Montenegrin authorities have contacted the competent Serbian authorities eight times about Marovic’s extradition and that no answer has come. By his account, three letters rogatory and five reminders were sent. Bozovic says the Ministry of Justice did everything it could to make Marovic available to the Montenegrin judiciary.
The minister also said that under international law Serbia has no automatic obligation to extradite a requested person, but that the Marovic case departs from the otherwise good judicial cooperation between the two countries. He then added, speaking to RTCG:
“We should think again about whether a plea agreement in this particular case was really an effective institution. Obviously it was not.”
The minister thus questions the very agreement on which the sentence rested, not only Belgrade’s silence in response to eight approaches.
Is this the first sentence to expire in the Marovic case?
No. Begovic recalled that the enforcement of a separate one-year prison sentence, imposed on Marovic because he had not paid a fine, also expired earlier. In 2021 the Basic Court in Kotor found that absolute statute of limitations had applied to enforcement of that sentence too. The same court now has to issue the ruling on the expiry of the main three-and-a-half-year sentence.
