A major sex scandal involving two top officials of Montenegro has led to their resignation.
The scandal concerns Mirjana Pajkovic, Director General for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, and Dejan Vuksic, former Director of the National Security Agency, The New York Post reported.
The now former state officials submitted their resignations after explicit material involving them went viral, leading to numerous mutual accusations, criminal complaints, and even threats.
Pajkovic announced her resignation on January 23, citing personal reasons, according to the Serbian Times. Her departure followed the earlier resignation of Dejan Vuksic, a former director of the National Security Agency and an adviser to President Jakov Milatovic. He stepped down in December after Pajkovic filed criminal complaints against him.
The resignations came after footage, allegedly showing Pajkovic and Vuksic in an intimate encounter, was leaked and widely circulated on social media.
While the timing and source of the footage remain unclear, its release sparked outrage and intense political fallout. Vuksic is married.
Pajkovic has accused Vuksic of blackmailing her with the video, claiming he threatened to release compromising material in order to silence her. “That my boss would see something that compromised me, where he clearly and directly threatened me that he had compromising material for me, why did I keep quiet at that moment?” Pajkovic was quoted as saying by the Montenegrin newspaper Pobjeda.
In her statement, Pajkovic claimed she was unaware of the video Vuksic was allegedly blackmailing her with, but feared for her safety due to his prominent government position. “When I myself was exposed to the extreme violence that I posted on social networks, where the first person next to the president of the country, the first former person of the National Security Agency, very persistently and at length during the entire conversation told me that there would be no place for me and no life in Montenegro,” she added.
In her resignation statement, Pajkovic encouraged women to stand up for themselves when threatened. "For example, when someone is blackmailing you. Someone more powerful will ask you for a favor, some behavior that you do not want at that moment, and if you refuse to do it, you will be handed over to someone who is the embodiment of the highest state authority. No one will physically hit you, this is the 21st century, but they very clearly want to destroy your life on all grounds," she said.
She has filed criminal complaints against Vuksic, including allegations of unauthorised distribution of explicit content, a serious criminal offence under Montenegrin law.
Vuksic has strongly denied the accusations, stating that he first saw the explicit content only after it began circulating online. He rejected claims that he violated Pajkovic's privacy and accused her of attempting to blackmail him in return.
“I reject all inaccurate, incomplete, and tendentious allegations by which, without evidence, responsibility is being attributed to me for the violation of MP's privacy and the distribution of the disputed recordings. I saw that content for the first time only when it began to circulate illegally on social networks,” he said. Vuksic filed his own criminal complaints against Pajkovic.
Both parties deny wrongdoing, and investigations into the competing allegations are ongoing.
