The Federal Ministry of Development, Entrepreneurship and Crafts announced a public competition in March, “Development of the start-up ecosystem,” worth 1.2 million BAM, with a deadline of nine days, including the weekend. The decision was, according to the statements of both recipients and those who complained, made “in half a day.” After a series of objections concerning the regularity of the procedure, the owners of the Sarajevo IT company Bloomteq submitted a criminal complaint against the competent minister, Vojin Mijatovic.
The Special Department of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH), POSKOK, confirmed that they had received a criminal complaint against Mijatovic.
“The Special Department of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office of FBiH on October 16th, 2025, received a report against the federal minister of development, entrepreneurship, and crafts, Vojin Mijatovic, and it was recorded in the System for Automatic Case Management of the Special Department. Checks of the allegations on the commission of the criminal offense from the submitted report will be carried out within a reasonable time,” they emphasized from POSKOK.
Kerim Balic: “We have submitted the complaint, evidence, and a public admission exists”
One of the owners of Bloomteq, Kerim Balic, publicly spoke out stating the chronology and reasons for which the complaint was submitted to POSKOK against Mijatović and, as he says, “another ten persons.”
“On March 21st, 2025, Vojin Mijatovic announced a public call for the allocation of a project worth 1.2 million BAM. The public call lasts only nine days, which is not enough time at all to collect the required documentation. Due to some other projects, our company had the documentation ready. Considering that from the public call itself, and even from the deadline for which it was opened, we recognized the rigging of the public call, we applied without expecting that we would pass,” wrote Balic.
He mentioned that the results were published on the second day of Eid, Tuesday, April 1st, 2025, because Monday was a non-working day.
“Of the two companies that met the conditions, we are ranked second. We submitted a formal objection on April 9th, and on April 11th, they swiftly rejected the objection and did not approve a transparent review of all applications. So, on April 25th we publicly express doubts for the first time about the entire public call and its results, and we ask for answers to completely logical questions, while on April 28th minister Vojin Mijatovic, during the swift signing of the contract with the consortium that got the job, which includes newly founded companies, gives a statement to the media and directs a public threat to us: ‘Let me note here that Nermin Niksic sat here, it’s not Fadil Novalic, I am Vojin Mijatovic! There are no more “Srebrene Maline” (Silver Raspberries), and everyone has the right to use all legal actions in order to possibly eliminate their ambiguities. And then we will, if necessary, continue to talk about this process, and by God also about those companies.’ Only seven days after that, the tax inspection came to our company, that is, the ‘special team of inspectors for silencing’ from Tuzla,” stated Balic.
However, he adds that they cannot be silenced, as can be seen from the attached.
“Now we come to the most important detail in the whole story. To ensure that all of this is not based only on our suspicion, the owner of one company, who also has private connections with Mijatovic, took care of that by literally publicly admitting the criminal offense of Vojin Mijatovic while guesting on the podcast ‘Plenum.’ That is, he admitted in front of the cameras how Vojin Mijatovic promised them that he would announce a ‘public’ call for them and thus allocate 1.200.000 BAM of citizens’ money to them. After that podcast, ‘Foundation 787,’ which was part of that consortium that got the job, immediately withdrew from that consortium due to suspicion of corruption,” he added.
In that post from six days ago, that is, October 17th, they finally, as he says, decided to follow the threatening advice of Vojin Mijatovic.
“And we used our right to use all legal actions in order to eliminate our ambiguities and submitted a criminal complaint to POSKOK against him and another ten persons. Truth be told, we do not have any ambiguities; everything is clear to us here. The only dilemma remains whether POSKOK is yet another of the shiny illusions for citizens hungry for justice, or if it is truly an institution that will enable the rule of law in this society. And yes, Vojin, it seems that with you there really are no ‘Silver Raspberries’ and staged affairs, real crime is on the scene,” said Balic, who in his Facebook post shared the “Plenum” video podcast in which the stated irregularities were exposed.
Santic in “Plenum” admitted everything
And in the “Plenum” podcast, the guest was Senad Santic, whose company is part of the Consortium Techstars Sarajevo, the recipient of 1.200.000 BAM in the public competition. He confirmed that representatives of the consortium discussed the project with Minister Mijatovic even before the announcement of the public call.
“Techstars is an accelerator that came from America… a strong brand in the world of accelerators. We needed 600.000 dollars to be able to finance this program… Bojan and colleague Harun had a meeting with the Government, with Mijatovic, and he was interested. He explained how it works, that a public tender needs to be announced in order to apply for this, then they made that invitation (public competition),” stated Santic.
Regarding objections on the short deadline and competitiveness, Santic says:
“Honestly… the opinion was that there would be nothing there that could compete with us at all. For the reason that Techstars is number two in the world, even if a thousand other stories came, what would you choose except Techstars? Maybe it is strange that the public call was open for nine days, but even if you open it for three years, who will you find stronger than this? It would only be worthwhile for it to stay open longer so we would not have the entire debacle after this.”
Speaking about reactions from the community, he added:
“I am confused that anyone in our community has a problem with this, but I understand they have a problem with the public procurement… I would have liked it not to have played out like this. At the end of the day, we brought Techstars.”
Objections from Bloomteq: “The process is non-transparent, threats of defamation”
Bloomteq earlier publicly called out the said competent federal ministry for non-transparency of the process.
“The call was announced quietly, without notice or promotion, which practically excluded greater competition. Evaluation criteria and the evaluation process itself remained unclear,” stated Nermin Hadzic, executive director of Bloomteq, in one of the posts on LinkedIn.
The company states that instead of a detailed response to the objection, it received a bureaucratic letter.
“If you believe that you have been deprived of your rights, we suggest that you initiate further legal steps,” along with the message that the Ministry “will assess possible elements of defamation” if “false claims” are made in public. “Insinuations about possible defamation lawsuits… stifle public dialogue and discourage civic engagement,” stated the executive director of Bloomteq, N1 writes.
