Milutin Simovic Sentenced to House Arrest in Podgorica

The Higher Court in Podgorica sentenced Montenegro’s former minister of agriculture and rural development, Milutin Simovic, to six months of house arrest on September 10 for abuse of office. The ruling lands as Podgorica, the region’s frontrunner in talks with Brussels, uses cases exactly like this one to show how far it has come on Chapter 23, the negotiating chapter that tracks the rule of law and high level corruption, an area where Belgrade is chasing its own progress too.

Judge Veljko Radovanovic found Simovic guilty on four of the 16 actions listed in the indictment, covering the period from June 7, 2017 to August 4, 2020, while he headed the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in the Government of Montenegro. The court ruled that the former minister caused 1,535.30 euros in damage to Montenegro’s budget and ordered him to repay that amount to the state.

According to the court, the case centered on private hotel and restaurant bills that Simovic filed as official expenses and then had reimbursed from his ministry’s budget. The bills named in the case came from the Podgorica hotels Splendid and Bianka, as well as restaurants he visited during trips to Rome. Tanjug reports that the indictment originally covered about 5,000 euros in private expenses billed as official spending, while the court’s ruling found damage of about 1,500 euros, a third of the amount prosecutors had sought.

Explaining the verdict, Judge Radovanovic said:

He is guilty because, from June 7, 2017 to August 4, 2020, as a high public official, the minister of agriculture and rural development in the Government of Montenegro, aware of the act he intended to carry out, he obtained a benefit of 1,535.30 euros to the detriment of the Montenegrin state budget.

The court cited Simovic’s clean record and his standing as a family man as mitigating factors, while it weighed as an aggravating factor that he held a senior public post entrusted to him by citizens at the time the offenses were committed.

Defense Announces Appeal

Miroslav Adzic, the lawyer representing Simovic, said after the verdict that the defense was not satisfied with the outcome and would appeal to Montenegro’s Appellate Court:

The damage caused by those actions amounts to about 1,500 euros.

Adzic added that the defense will try to prove, as the case continues, that Simovic did not commit even the actions on which he was convicted at first instance. Simovic himself told the court in his closing statement that he does not feel guilty of the charges against him.

This is not the first time the former minister has faced measures during the investigation. Acting on an order from the Special State Prosecutor’s Office (SDT), authorities arrested Simovic on December 22, 2025, and released him to defend himself from freedom after several days in detention. A year earlier, on December 13, 2024, he was also arrested on the SDT’s order, but was not placed in detention at that time.

Prosecutors had initially suspected Simovic in a separate case tied to unlawful payments from the agriculture budget, but left that part of the case out of the later indictment. Former agriculture minister Petar Ivanovic, former state secretary in the same ministry Nemanja Katnic, and Vukica Perovic, head of the finance, accounting and public procurement service, were charged in that separate affair, and their case is still before Montenegro’s courts.

The ruling against Simovic is a first instance verdict, so the Appellate Court in Podgorica still has to rule on the defense’s appeal. No date has been set yet for that hearing.