Alcazar Energy Partners Is Blackmailing Us and Threatening Expropriation

The company Alcazar Energy Partners, founder of the Montenegrin firm Wind Park Bijela, continues to blatantly violate Montenegrin laws, the Constitution, and international conventions, and is attempting to forcibly seize private property from the residents of Brezna in order to build a transmission line through their land to the substation in Brezna for the planned Bijela wind farm in the municipality of Šavnik – stated the residents gathered in the Civic Initiative “Save Brezna.”

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They emphasize that today's so-called presentation of the project in Plužine, organized by Alcazar Energy, was held solely to simulate a dialogue process with the local population, which, as they said, is necessary for the company to present the ESIA (Environmental and Social Impact Assessment) document to international financial institutions and apply for credit funds.

“International financial institutions such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the European Investment Bank (EIB), the World Bank (WB), and others have high standards and very strict criteria regarding the impact on local communities. This document is supposed to demonstrate that the investor respects these standards in order to be granted funds. The fact that this was merely a staged dialogue is evident from the way Alcazar Energy issued the invitation – only to the media, without informing the citizens, and without explaining what kind of presentation it was or why it was being held. They brought several employees of a PR agency from Podgorica, who then drafted and distributed a press release full of untruths,” said the Civic Initiative Save Brezna.

They add that none of the residents of Brezna were invited. On the contrary:

“They tried to do this under the table, hoping that none of us would show up, and that the media and the paid PR agency would report only their version and praise them as benefactors of Piva and Montenegro,” they stated.

They emphasize that they accidentally found out about the event and came to send a clear message to Alcazar Energy: they are not welcome in their village.

“The last thing they did was to secretly send two of their employees to the oldest resident of our village, a 95-year-old man who lives alone, to try to convince him to sell his land. They told him that it would be better to sell it voluntarily than to have it taken through expropriation. What do you call this if not – violence, blackmail, threats? Secretly visiting a 95-year-old man who lives alone and threatening him with expropriation if he doesn't sell – what do you call that?” ask the residents of Brezna.

They also explained how they found out about Alcazar Energy Partners’ plan to build a transmission line through their village:

“We accidentally found out about the public consultation regarding the Environmental Study, and what we saw shocked us – in the Study, our plots were listed, and it was stated that agreements had been made with the landowners and that lease contracts had been signed. That was the first time we heard about it. A few days later, they launched an invasion of our land – sending surveyors to measure what part of our private property they would take, without our knowledge or consent. They submitted a request to the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property to declare public interest, so the state, with the assistance of the police, could seize our land and hand it over to them,” they said.

They ask on what grounds a private company like Alcazar Energy Partners is threatening them with expropriation:

“Who in the system promised them the declaration of public interest, and what lies behind that? We are sending a message to them and to all others who want to install massive energy facilities in Gornja Brezna and drive us from our homes, destroy our properties and lands – we will defend what is most sacred to us with our lives – our homes, our children, and our future,” they concluded.