Under investigation by the Office of the European Public Prosecutor for suspected misuse of loan funds and corruption during the construction of Corridor Vc are the director of Motorways of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH), Denis Lasic, the executive director, the procurement officer, and a consultant of this company, former federal minister Erdal Trhulj.
And while European investors and the prosecution are investigating manipulations in the spending of loans, from Motorways comes a denial. They claim they did not misuse even a cent, and that the former management is to blame for the crime. A company producing more scandals than kilometers of highway.
The internal investigation by the European Investment Bank (EIB) Fraud Office on the misuse of European Union (EU) money has become the subject of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office. Director of Highways Denis Lasic is also suspected of allegedly rigging a tender for supervision works on the Ozimice – Poprikuse motorway subsection, where the second-ranked bidder for the job was allegedly supposed to pay a bribe. Lasic, Dzevlan, Vranjkovic, and Trhulj are suspected of influencing the outcome of the public procurement.
“Italian company Technital was favored, and according to the statement from the deputy EU prosecutor, a bribe was requested from it. There are only details that it happened at a hospitality establishment in Istocno Sarajevo and that the amount of the bribe was 125.000 euros. It was written like that, and in this way, as stated in the document, the four mentioned persons from Motorways, as well as the consultant, tried to influence the process in favor of the mentioned company,” emphasized journalist Amil Ducic.
Namely, the mentioned Italian company, which also reported the corruption, through an intermediary company from Sarajevo, already in 2023 submitted a bid of 4.6 million euros for this job, and the tender procedure was taken over by Lasic’s management that year. This second-ranked bid, according to the intermediary company’s document, allegedly became first-ranked under the pretext of a calculation error, where 4.6 becomes 4.06 million, which is the subject of the EU investigators’ probe. How did the second-ranked company get the job for 0.45 points more, even though there was also a bidder who offered a million euros cheaper offer?
“It is certainly indicative that if the Office of the European Prosecutor had any reasonable suspicion to initiate an investigation; this clearly shows that an independent body, outside the judicial system of BiH, evidently has certain concrete indications to investigate very highly positioned officials or managers in a public company for possible embezzlement of funds,” explained Damjan Ozegovic, senior researcher and legal associate at Transparency International in BiH (TIBiH).
Parallel to the investigation by the European prosecutor and the BiH prosecutor’s office, the cantonal prosecutor’s offices also investigated these allegations, and everything was forwarded to POSKOK. From the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA), we received confirmation that they also acted on the order of the state prosecutor’s office, to which the report was also submitted, and which, at the beginning of the year, they confirmed to us, provided assistance at the request of the Office of the European Public Prosecutor. We also received confirmation of the investigation from the EIB, which has increased monitoring and reporting measures on activities on Corridor Vc. And from Motorways, instead of answers to concrete questions, a denial and accusations about crime. Already arrested former directors, they claim, were siphoning money from the company in the same way, by inflating prices.
“It is completely clear what the real goal of this campaign was. Behind it stands the hidden owner of the company, TRASA d.o.o. Elmedin Voloder and the former director of Motorways of the FBiH, who, by reporting to the EIB, and now also to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, tried to divert attention from their own criminal activities and direct the investigation against the current management. All the evidence is duly documented and submitted to the competent authorities in BiH, which are the only ones authorized to conduct the investigation and identify the real perpetrators.”
While the supervision works on this subsection are being investigated, construction has never even started. Three years and three canceled tenders, twice during the current management’s mandate, and the last time in May of this year, after the mentioned EIB investigation, when the last-ranked company on the list got the job. A new supervision tender worth 4.7 million euros was announced a month ago. It is again financed by the EIB, and the question is whether the investigation will also mean delaying the start of construction, which would also mean new penalties and a more expensive Corridor Vc.
