Violent reactions were caused by the news about approved funds in the amount of 31.5 million marks intended for the purchase of a building for the Directorate for Indirect Taxation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. While the BiH Council of Ministers rejects accusations of any crime and possible lobbying, the opposition accuses the government of an attempt to buy the Grand Trade building, which is owned by Milo Radišić, the godfather of Milorad Dodik. A story that has been going on for years thus regains its plot. A new public tender follows. The question is whether Radišić’s company will again be the only one that meets all the conditions.
The Directorate for Indirect Taxation of BiH, which has recently been headed by Zoran Tegeltija, close to Milorad Dodik, has at its disposal, by the amended decision of the BiH Council of Ministers, about 70 million marks for the purchase and furnishing of the building in which the central office of the Directorate and the Regional Office in Banja Luka would be located. The Council of Ministers explains that the amended decision only combined 31.5 million marks, which were set aside this year, with 37.9 million marks that were secured nine years ago.
“We made a decision on the allocation of those funds. Now the way they will be used is the sole responsibility of the ITA,” said BiH Deputy Minister of Finance Muhamed Hasanović.
A new public announcement for the purchase and furnishing of the building follows. It is not known who will apply. But earlier attempts did not go smoothly. The first advertisement for the ITA was published in 2017. After that, two failed due to non-fulfillment of strict conditions. It was only on the fourth public advertisement that an offer that met the conditions arrived, and it is the offer of the company Grand Trade, which is owned by Milo Radišić, Milorad Dodik’s godfather. At that time, the ITA did not receive the support of the Council of Ministers to secure additional funds and buy a building that cost about 100 million marks. It is symptomatic that the resolution of the perennial problem is speeding up after the SNSD party took control of the ITA, but the BiH Council of Ministers rejects the accusations.
“There is no type of lobbying. So there are no allocations of additional funds, nor any other way that this was influenced. I don’t see anything controversial,” Hasanović said.
“We currently have 69.4 million BAM and we will try to use that amount to solve the accommodation of the employees. The moment we receive offers, we will know what the situation is on the market and how many offers there will be and whether those offers will meet the conditions that the Administration is looking for and that does the Administration ultimately have enough funds,” explains Ratko Kovačević, spokesman for the ITA of BiH.
However, those who have been pointing to crime and abuses in the ITA for years are skeptical that everything will be transparent and that there is no political background.
“If all 70 are joined with these original funds, there is no doubt that then only one company comes into consideration. The whole pressure was to set up Radišić, Grand Trade, that is, to respect the interests of Milorad Dodik in the whole story”, claims Ivana Korajlić, executive director of Transparency International BiH.
“The political agreement shows that in BiH you have forces that think only in the first person, they only think about themselves so that they will be well. This is about crime and it should fall into the right hands, into the hands of the prosecutors of BiH”, says Mehmedalija Osmić, former head of the Department for the Implementation of Regulations at the Regional Center of the ITA BiH in Tuzla.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of our country rejected all accusations of possible criminality. He asks, if the purchase of the building is a concession to Dodik, what is the long-term lease payment? The ITA of BiH cites the same reason. The acquisition of a new building solves the problem of accommodation for around 900 employees who have been working in leased and non-standard premises until now. So far, several million marks have been spent to pay the rent.
