Married top presidential adviser and his subordinate resign as sex tape scandal rocks Montenegro

An alleged leaked s£x tape featuring two prominent government officials in Montenegro has led to both politicians resigning in disgrace. 

Mirjana Pajković, the glamorous now-former director general for the promotion and protection of human rights at the Ministry of Human and Minority Rights, announced her resignation on Friday, according to Montenegrin newspaper Pobjeda. 

The government has been embroiled in the s£x scandal since a video was leaked online, allegedly showing Pajković engaging in s£xual activity with Dejan Vukšić, the married former national security agency director and ex-adviser to President Jakov Milatović. 

In her statement, Pajković encouraged “every woman” to reject the notion that they must remain silent when someone attacks them, the outlet reported. 

“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 said, claiming Milatović failed to act in the scandal. 

Pajković said her departure was due to personal reasons — but took several swipes at Vukšić, accusing him of threatening her with the tape to remain quiet. 

“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?” Pajković said, according to the outlet. “He told me this personally after I refused to act the way he asked me.” 

Pajković said she was unaware of the footage Vukšić was allegedly blackmailing her with but feared he would harm her because he was in a top role in the security sector. 

“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 wrote. 

During the long-winded scandal, Pajković and Vukšić each denied the claims made by the other, filed criminal complaints — and a threat was even made from a landline inside the president’s office, the Serbian Times reported. 

One criminal complaint filed by Pajković was for the unauthorized distribution of explicit content, including a photograph of her. 

Vukšić resigned in late December, also citing personal reasons, after Pajković filed the complaints with the police against him following the explicit content surfacing online. 

“I reject all inaccurate, incomplete, and tendentious allegations by which, without evidence, responsibility is being attributed to me for the violation of [Pajković’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,” Vukšić charged, according to the outlet. 

Vukšić accused Pajković of violating his privacy by “misappropriating” the phone that allegedly recorded him making a threat against her during a phone call on a landline in Milatović’s office. 

“The words I addressed to [Pajković] on that occasion, which were selectively published with a time delay of one year and three months, were an immediate reaction to the theft and abuse of my phone,” he said. 

In March, Vukšić allegedly received a phone call blackmailing him to withdraw a judge’s candidacy from the constitutional court or have the audio recordings published, he claimed, accusing Pajković of being a part of the group that made the call. 

Vukšić said Pajković was questioned by authorities after he submitted a police report against her for attempted extortion, theft and abuse of a phone. 

He also claimed Pajković used the recording of the “threat” in one of her criminal complaints in January, trying to pass it off as a recent development, according to the Serbian Times. 

It was not clear when the suspected s£x tape was made.