On the day when the United States (U.S.) blacklisted the director of the Administration for Geodetic and Property Legal Affairs for usurping state property, Visegrad Mayor Mladen Djurevic stated that “he is waiting for the Administration to register state property in this municipality.”
It is about 450,000 square meters of the former barracks of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) “Uzamnica”, in Visegrad in the east of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).
The property that the mayor of Visegrad is talking about belongs to BiH. Its disposal is prohibited by the Law from 2005, which was imposed by the then High Representative in BiH, Paddy Ashdown.
Despite this, the first man of Visegrad says that he will offer this state property to investors.
How did the Government of Republika Srpska (RS) allocate property to Visegrad?
Djurevic points out that all “legal procedures” were followed, and that the Government of the RS and the Attorney General’s Office of the RS participated in the entire process.
“We have reached an agreement [on mutual relations], there is an agreement from the RS Attorney General’s Office. The Republic Administration for Geodetic and Property Legal Affairs, which is responsible for registering property, is on the move,” Djurevic points out.
On March 15th, the U.S. blacklisted Dragan Stankovic, director of the Administration for Geodetic and Property-Legal Affairs, due to the adoption of the RS Property Law in April 2022.
Attempts to appropriate state property
The RS has tried four times to legally regulate the issue of state property in the entity parliament. The first time it did so was in 2012, after which the law was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court of BiH.
Certain articles of the Law on Agricultural Land and the Law on Inland Navigation were declared unconstitutional in 2020, and the same happened with parts of the Law on Forests in 2021.
The Law on State Property was never adopted at the state level, which is why the Law on the Prohibition of Dispossession from 2005 is in force. This law, as clarified by the High Representative’s decision at the time, is in force until the state parliament adopts a new one, Slobodna Evropa reports.
E.Dz.
