STARI GRAD SARAJEVO, VOGOŠĆA, NEUM, BUGOJNO – The municipality of Stari Grad in Sarajevo will be managed for the next four years by Irfan Čengić, who succeeded the former mayor Ibrahim Hadžibajrić, who is currently on trial before the Cantonal Court in Sarajevo for organized crime, abuse of position/authority, money laundering, receiving and giving gifts, writes Tačno.net.
By order of the Sarajevo Canton Prosecutor’s Office, several real estates, a luxury car, money in accounts and a share in an investment fund, which have been entrusted to the custody and management of the Federal Agency for the Management of Confiscated Assets, have been temporarily confiscated.
Irfan Čengić, a member of the Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina, received the support of voters from the Stari Grad Municipality in the recently held local elections, and will be the head of this Sarajevo municipality for the next four years.
Namely, Čengić previously, and after the referendum on the dismissal of the previous mayor Ibrahim Hadžibajrić in Stari Grad Municipality was held in July 2023, won the early elections for the mayor of this municipality. Čengić was given a not very grateful position, when this municipality was rocked by one of the biggest post-war corruption scandals, in which the main actor was his predecessor, who ruled the Municipality of Stari Grad for more than two decades.
After this year’s convincing victory, Čengić wrote on his website that he inherited a municipality in which total chaos, crime and corruption reigned, and that he suffered daily pressure from various interest groups.
“With all the challenges, we have shown that we know how to lead processes and that we have the courage to lead processes, the fight against crime and corruption. We adopted the Development Strategy of the Municipality of Stari Grad Sarajevo until 2027, which outlined strategic goals, priorities and concrete projects worth over 60 million KM,” wrote Čengić.
And in mid-June 2024, the main hearing in the case against Ibrahim Hadžibajrić and others began in the Sarajevo Cantonal Court. A little more than seven months after the arrest of Hadžibajrić and others in mid-January 2024, the federal agency for the management of confiscated assets seized three parking lots in Stari Grad, which are connected to Ibrahim Hadžibajrić.
Nothing new in Vogošća
Asim Sarajlić, the former mayor of the Municipality of Vogošća, is also returning to the docks. Together with Sabahudin Delalić and Muhamed Šehović, he will be tried again for the criminal offense of “giving gifts and other forms of benefit”. This followed after the Cantonal Court accepted the appeal of the KS Prosecutor’s Office, which annulled the first-instance acquittal.
The indictment accused them that from February 20 to 25, 2020, before the scheduled internal party elections of the Democratic Action Party for the president of the SDA Sarajevo Cantonal Committee, in which the proposed candidates were Semir Efendić, the mayor of the Municipality of Novi Grad Sarajevo, and Fikret Prevljak, through Muhamed Šehović arranged a meeting with delegate Velid Tvrtković.
Sarajlić is the former vice-president and former head of the personnel commission of the leading Bosniak Party of Democratic Action (SDA).
The affair of political corruption was made public by the publication of an audio recording on the Facebook page of Semir Efendić, however, apart from this topic, on the recording you can also hear how Sarajlić and Delalić present numerous details from the recent and distant past when it comes to staffing, lobbying, employment, but also future plans.
We remind you that during the mandate of Asim Sarajlić as the mayor of the municipality of Vogošća, the Murai Komerce company won a tender for construction land for the construction of a residential and business complex. In 2007, the municipality of Vogošća announced a public tender for the allocation of construction land for the construction of a business-residential complex. According to the data from the competition, the size of the plot was 5,200 m2 with a total gross construction area of 10,000 m2 and a net area of 8,500 m2. With the intention of building a residential space with a total of 10 floors, three floors and a mansard.
Regardless of the fact that the land was illegally allocated, in November 2007, Asim Sarajlić issued urban planning approval to Murai Komerc for the construction of two residential and commercial buildings according to the conceptual design made by the company Games doo Travnik, which included a basement, a high ground floor and three floors. In May 2008, Murai Komerce received a building permit to begin work. This was never investigated.
Ajkunić exits, Mašić enters
A real commotion arose on election night in the Municipality of Bugojno. Namely, shortly after the closing of the polling stations, the SDA declared the victory of its candidate for the head of the municipality, believing in infinite confidence, however, the official results showed that the citizens of Bugojno failed them this year. Namely, more than 6,000 citizens or 44.88% of them gave their support to the social democrat, Troika candidate Edin Mašić.
Mašić won in the SDA’s nest, which was sovereignly ruled by candidate Mirza Idrizović for years. In these local elections, the SDA did not run for the former mayor of the Municipality of Bugojno, Hasan Ajkunić, and the reason for this is that at the end of last year, the Prosecutor’s Office of the Central Bosnia Canton filed an indictment against him, due to the well-founded suspicion that he had committed the prolonged criminal offense of abuse of position or authority, which was confirmed by the Municipal court in Bugojno.
Residents of the Local Community of Porica filed a criminal complaint against Mayor Ajkunić due to disputed decisions of the Municipal Council and the Mayor regarding the exploitation of dolomite in their yards.
The locals of Porica, as well as other activists, are impatiently waiting for the formation of the Municipal Council, and they hope that politicians from other parties, who are not in the SDA, will understand the dangers they have been talking about for years.
Maybe with the new faces in the Municipality, environmental awareness will come to Bugojno.
From Visoko to Neum: Standard setting
The saga surrounding the sale of part of the state property related to the workers’ resort “Feroelektro” in Neum, as well as the Zenita hotel, has no end in sight. It seems that it will remain so, because the government in this BiH city on the sea remained in the hands of HDZ BiH.
A small municipality in the south of Herzegovina has been under the rule of the HDZ BiH since the introduction of democracy, whose candidate Dragan Jurković was the only candidate in this year’s local elections, without an opponent. If we take into account that HDZ also has a majority in the Municipal Council, it is difficult to expect a different relationship from the one already known.
The public company RTV Visoko went bankrupt six years ago, and former employees are still seeking justice. Currently, the proceedings are being conducted at the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as claimed by Alen Jazić himself, one of several former employees who sued their former company. He states that they expect a verdict in the coming months, and that they are ready to seek justice in Strasbourg as well.
It is difficult to expect that Mirza Ganić from the SDA, who succeeded his party colleague Amra Babić as the mayor of Visoko, will understand the problems of the former employees of RTV Visoko, because he ignored their requests for the previous four years.
Ganić also won the majority of votes in this year’s local elections. He defeated Adnan Delić from SDP, Mirnes Fatić from NiP, Dario Pekić who represented People’s Power, and Elvedin Šabanović from the movement “FORWARD!”. In this city, the Troika could not agree on something common, so everyone nominated their own person.
So far, Ganić’s political career includes mandates in the Visoko City Council, ZDK Assembly, Federal Parliament and in the position of ZDK Prime Minister. In addition, the SDA, together with the DF and the Party for BiH, will have a majority, as it has until now, in the City Council.
MIS BIH
Source: capital.ba
