Although Adnan Šteta, Outgoing Transport Minister,following the tram accident in Sarajevo in which one person lost his life, publicly stated that there are no secret contracts, the ministry he heads refused to provide the contract again with the Chinese company worth 40 million BAM for the reconstruction of tram tracks in Sarajevo, justifying it by the commercial interest of the third party.
In an interview for Federalna televizija (Federal Television), a few days after the tram accident in Sarajevo in which one person lost his life, and the other was seriously injured, Šteta said how “that story about secret contracts started in 2021”, and that until then “ There was no talk about secret contracts in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina until then and despite the fact that until 2021 EBRD, EIB, or World Bank had over one hundred similar contracts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, nobody talked about secrecy.”
“There is no secret contract anywhere in the world. How can there be a secret contract if the international tender has been launched. If the qualifications and the contractor meet the tender requirements. A contract has been signed publicly with that contractor. The contractor is introduced with the work, a plaque installed including the name of the contractor, project name, and the price. There are no secret contracts,” Šteta said.
Journalists from Detektor for the past two months, on the basis of the Law on Freedom of Access to Information, have been contactin the Ministry of Transport of Sarajevo Canton and Minister Šteta, asking them to deliver the contract for the reconstruction of the tram tracks which was signed by the Government of Sarajevo Canton in June, 2021 with the consortium of Chinese companies including “China Shandong International Economic & Technical Cooperation Group” (Shandong) and “China Railway No. 10 Engineering Group Co.” (CREC 10), they stated.
The response by the Ministry of Transport of Sarajevo Canton to a written request from March, states how the requests is rejected because the contract contains confidential commercial interests of the third party.
It was explained that , as a contracting authority, they addressed the contractor “ to state its position, as contracting party, regarding the disclosure of the contract in question.” The contractor responded saying that contract contains information that “ represent a trade secret and confidential information of the company,” and that its disclosure could put the contractor at a disadvantage.
“The public is already familiar with the price of the contract, and that information completely satisfies the public interest. The release of individual prices from the Bill of Quantities would not contribute in any way to the public interest, but rather it would represent a direct breach of the Contract provisions between the parties,” the statement said.
Minister Šteta did not respond to Detektor’s query on why the contract remains secret. In a previous investigation, Detektor reported that the Ministry of Transport classified as confidential a contract worth more than 40 million BAM for reconstruction of tram tracks in Sarajevo, signed with a Chinese company linked to a number of accidents in earlier projects that resulted in injuries and deaths of workers.
According to media reports, in June, 2017, six workers died in a gas leak during tunnel construction in China’s Yunnan province. Earlier that month, five workers were killed when a crane collapsed in Jinan, with sixth worker dying later in hospital. Other branches of the CREC company were sanctioned by the World Bank.
“Any refusal to access of this type of information that is not conducted in accordance with legal provisions, and is not supported by a public interest test, raises suspicion about the validity of such decisions,” said Ena Kljajić-Grgić, Head of the Legal Aid Center at Transparency International.
Since 2022, that organization has won seven administrative disputes in the court against the Ministry of Transport and Communications of Republika Srpska as they were not delivered the contract with the Chinese investor on construction of the Prijedor-Banja Luka motorway.
Kljajić-Grgić said how after the third ruling from the Ministry of Transport and Communication from Republika Srpska partially approved the access to the requested contract, but they limited the access to the “Annex No.23”, referring to the financial model of the contract, explaining that it protects confidential commercial interests of the concessionaire. For this reason, she added, they were forced to file extraordinary legal remedies against the court decisions.
“In the repeated proceedings, the Ministry continuously refused to comply with the rulings of the District Court in Banja Luka, which is why we filed extraordinary legal remedies and appealed to the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. We believe that the refusal by the District Court to take a stand on certain issues crucial for resolving the long-standing dispute, constitutes a violation of our right to effective judicial protection guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights,” Kljajić-Grgić stated.
She noted that in this specific case, they considered that the position of the Ministry regarding the protection of confidential information is restrictive because it is about access to information from Concession Agreement concluded by the public body on behalf of citizens with a concessionaire. Concessionaire is a private legal entity. Further more, she emphasized that the concessionaire was aware from the start that it was entering into a contractual relationship with a public law entity, and in that respect, did not enjoy the protection of commercial interests, Balkan Investigative Reporting Network of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIRN BiH) reported.
