The debt towards Viaduct is growing every day. Interest is accumulating, so the debt has reached 112 million BAM. Political representatives are “without concern,” given that this debt will also be repaid by the citizens.
After months of discussion about the Viaduct case, after the hearings before members of the Commission for Combating Corruption and the Commission for Finance and Budget of the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina (PABiH), there was not a word about Viaduct. At that time, Milanko Kajganic, the Chief Prosecutor of the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH, said that the Prosecutor’s Office had heard certain attorneys.
“Given that failure to enforce the verdict constitutes a criminal offense, the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH has opened a case based on the report of the legal representatives of ‘Viaduct’ due to the failure to enforce the mentioned verdict, and members of the Council of Ministers and members of the Presidency of BiH have been reported,” said Milanko Kajganic, Chief Prosecutor of the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH.
Transparency International (TI) believes that, in addition to the Prosecutor’s Office, other state bodies should also be involved in this case.
“Decision-makers here obviously do not respect procedures; they engage in projects with highly suspicious companies. Very likely, many of them benefit from it. In addition to them, various other law enforcement agencies should be involved, because this is really a serious, I would dare to say, failure,” says Damjan Ozegovic from TI BiH.
The interest and support of the authorities is key, says the member of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska (NARS), Nebojsa Vukanovic. He also referred to the case of Comsar, a company that took the thermal power plant in Ugljevik under concession and was supposed to start coal exploitation.
“Of course, it is the interest of the people behind it, and those are the people at the top of the energy system and at the top of the government and the Government of RS, who, I am sure, just like in the case of Comsar and these other disputable concessions and briefcase-companies that have no employees, no fiscal account, but are taking hundreds of millions from RS. They wouldn’t do that if there were no interest and support from this corrupt government,” says Nebojsa Vukanovic, member of the NARS.
Citizens will once again pay another debt, politics again without responsibility. Negligence, disinterest, and a lack of desire from the political side of BiH to repay the enormous debt lead to yet another deepening of the problem.
“They know they will not be personally responsible, they know they will not be sanctioned, they know they will not pay anything themselves, nor go to prison. That is why they do not care whether the citizens and the economy will pay five million, 20, or 200,” says Igor Gavran, economist.
Branislav Borenovic, Chairman of the Commission for Combating Corruption, says that today we have institutional silence from key political figures in this country, as if some of them are involved in all these frauds.
“What is most unfortunate and completely clear: this will be paid from the people’s budget. It is a regional fraud, which surely has domestic elements, probably from individuals in the political elites of this country,” says Branislav Borenovic, Chairman of the Commission for Combating Corruption.
A delegate from the Serb People’s Caucus in the House of Peoples of the PABiH, Radovan Kovacevic, claims that a model for paying the debt has been found at the Council of Ministers of BiH, while on the other hand, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of BiH states that an adequate model exists, but there is no desire to propose it.
“RS has given its position, and the Minister of Finance has given his proposal; the Chairwoman of the Council of Ministers accepted that proposal. That proposal was the possibility to resolve that issue,” says Radovan Kovacevic, delegate of the Serb People’s Caucus in the House of Peoples of BiH.
“There is no concrete and acceptable solution from Minister Amidzic, who is obliged to offer a solution. He knows that there are several models that we agree on and would vote for, but he does not want to propose them. He continues to insist that the Federation should bear most of the costs of this lost dispute, and generally, in the end, it will be paid by the BiH entity RS,” says Elmedin Konakovic, Minister of Foreign Affairs of BiH.
And the Minister of Finance and Treasury of BiH shifts the responsibility to the Presidency of BiH.
“I ask my colleagues from the Presidency who did not forward any proposal to the parliamentary procedure, why they are questioning the functioning of the institutions of BiH. They will be responsible for the Viaduct case and why every day we have a penalty interest of 9.000 euros,” says Srdjan Amidzic, Minister of Finance and Treasury of BiH.
The Air Traffic Controllers’ Union reacted after statements from the director of the BiH Air Navigation Services Agency(BHANSA), in which he spoke about the sudden and rapid increase in requests for sick leave, which, according to his claims, significantly endangers operations. Among other things, the Union described his statements as tendentious, with the question: “Are such statements actually protecting the workers?”
