Federation Minister for Issues of Veterans and Disabled Veterans of Defensive-Liberation War Zukan Helez stated at the press conference in Sarajevo today that Government of FBiH issued a decision at a session 15 days ago on giving consent for annulment of acts of his ministry from earlier period and giving consent to proposal of titles of commands, units and assembly of Army of RBiH, HVO and HOS, which annuls earlier decisions and takes away rights from around 2.000 users of privileged pensions.
He explained these are privileged pensions that only those who were commanders of battalions or higher level for at least 12 months are entitled to and that due to lack of bylaws there is a situation that same criteria do not apply for members of Army of RBiH and HVO because in case of HVO, commander of higher command post, war hospital, logistic base and war military school was stated as equivalent to commander of battalion, which is illegal.
Helez emphasized that it enabled persons who are not entitled to that right to exercise right to early retirement, and those were pensions amounting 800.00 BAM which damaged budget of the Federation of BiH for approximately 200 million BAM in the last 10 years, and he said criminal charges will be filed against those persons.
He added that 11 false decisions for early retirement were revealed in Čapljina and criminal charges will be filed in that case.
Helez said that majority of approximately 2.000 persons, who will no longer be able to exercise rights to privileged pensions are most likely former members of HVO and there is a chance that one of them was not even a member of a military unit.
”This is confirmed by statements signed by: Martin Frančešević, Ibrahim Ganibegović and I believe Armin Čengić. They deny they did this and they refer to previous minister Zahid Crnkić”, said Helez and added that copies of those statements will be available to the media.
(Source: Fena)
