24.09.2024. / 9:56
KREŠEVO – The municipality of Kreševo is small, but it is an important and strong stronghold of HDZ BiH. In the municipal council, which has 15 councilors, 10 are from this party. Kreševo, according to the unofficial census from 2013, has 5,273 inhabitants, of which about 4,500 are voters.
In the 2020 local elections, less than half of them, 2,200, voted, and HDZ BiH candidate Renato Pejak was elected as mayor, receiving about 78 percent of the vote, the percentage identical to the number of Croatian residents according to the census. There is no doubt who will be the mayor after the election on October 6. Boris Marić (HDZ BiH) is the only candidate on the electoral list.
The two mandates of the current mayor of Kreševo, Renato Pejak, are characterized by several suspicious actions related to the municipality’s operations. This was stated by the federal auditors in their report on the financial audit of the Municipality of Kreševo for the year 2023, and the details from the report largely match the previous writings of the Journal about the developments in this municipality.
The municipality of Kreševo once donated state land to a private individual, who had to hand over that state land to NLB Bank due to an unpaid loan. The plots on the Rakovo Noga-Bjelovići stretch had to be registered as state property because there was a declared public interest in them. After the lime factory was opened in this area owned by BFS in 2009, the company Barit buys shares in disputed plots that were then privately owned. Both companies are owned by the Stanić family. 12 plots were purchased, after which the Municipality declared the construction of the road to be of public interest. This meant that the Municipality would expropriate real estate from Barit for its own benefit, writes Miss BiH.
Barit used the plots as collateral for loans from NLB Bank. Credit obligations were not fulfilled on time and NLB was registered as the owner of part of the plots. The criminal complaint was submitted to the SBK Prosecutor’s Office, which assessed that there was no criminal offense. In the meantime, the parcels were registered in the municipality of Kreševo in an unknown way, and Žurnal’s sources state that everything happened after Mayor Pejak asked Stanić to solve this problem, aware that illegal registration of state property is a criminal offense.
Financially less harmful, but equally legally disputed, was the decision of the Kreševo Municipal Council from 2022, which authorized the mayor to “sign a contract with the mayor of the Municipality of Vitez on the assignment of the municipal attorney of Vitez.” Pejak decided to “hire” the ombudsman to determine the public interest and expropriate real estate for certain reconstructions in the municipality of Kreševo. This decision is illegal according to the Law on Attorneys of the SBK, because each municipality in this canton establishes its own attorney’s office, and the law does not provide for the possibility of “renting” attorneys.
“Due to the fact that the position of ombudsman has been vacant since 2005, and the Municipal Public ombudsman’s office for the areas of the municipalities of Kreševo, Kiseljak and Fojnica was abolished in 2023, the protection of property and property interests of the Municipality is not ensured,” the report of the federal auditors stated.
The Kreševo municipal officials had more business moves that “collide” with the law. One of them was the intention for the municipality to partially finance the construction of transmission lines to two small hydroelectric plants, with a total value of 3.3 million KM. Half of the amount was to be paid by Elektroprivreda HZ HB, half a million by the municipality of Kreševo, and the rest by the company that owns the small hydropower plants. One of the MHE is owned by the company Euro-Power from Tešnj, the owner of which is Izudin Ahmetlić, who owns the profitable company Hifa-oil.
After they realized that they did not have the necessary money, they came up with an innovative business “stunt” in Kreševo. The concession and permit for the construction of the MHP was first obtained by the company Radava, which will transfer all rights to Euro-Power in 2015. As Radava owns the quarry, a contract was drawn up whereby the money from the concessions paid into the municipal budget from the quarry and MHP would be invested in the construction of this transmission line:
“Simply put: We will pay you as a municipality for our concessions, and you will use the same money to pay the obligations you have from our joint contract, and in this way we will achieve the planned again. The money that Radava and Euro Power Tešanj are obliged by law to pay on the basis of concessions, we will return again through the obligations of the municipality of Kreševo through this contract,” said the interlocutor of Žurnal from Kreševo at the time, reports Misbih.
At the same time, the municipality consciously or not ignored an important detail: the company Radava has six blocked accounts in different banks – and none of them are active. It has been in a financial blockade for years, and it was quite clear that it could not sign any contract on the transfer of financial resources, especially a contract with a public institution such as the municipality.
What does the current mayor of Kreševo leave to his successor in office?
Compared to the one from 2021, the municipal budget for 2024 has almost doubled and amounts to about 4.9 million marks. At the same time, the municipality has support granted by the Croatian government, and the federal government has been no less generous recently.
For the construction of the “Business Incubator” in the Resnik zone, the Government of Croatia provided approximately 162,500 marks in 2022, and approximately 235,000 marks two years later. This project, worth 1.2 million, was started in 2022. This year, after the initial 62,000 marks, the federal government was much more generous, and approved 395,000 marks for the completion of the business incubator. The contract with the mayor was signed by the Federal Minister of Development, Entrepreneurship and Crafts, Vojin Mijatović, who, as we know, established good relations with the Stanić family.
This is where we come to the real rulers of Kreševo, the Stanić family. The brothers Zvjezdan, Svjetlan and Goran, each in their own segment, have developed large businesses, primarily in Croatia. They own dozens of companies and agencies, mostly in BiH and Croatia, worth hundreds of millions, as well as real estate. In addition to the juice factory, in Kreševo, under the patronage of Goran Stanić, this family owned the companies Barit and BFS. For years, the journal wrote about the work of these companies in Kreševo.
The millions that profited from the controversial privatization of Feroelektra are only a fraction of the enormous wealth that they multiply abroad. In the past ten years, the Stanići have invested 35 million marks in real estate in the wider area of Zagreb. This year they also bought the Ambasador hotel on the Crikvenica Riviera worth ten million euros.
Federal audit
Federal auditors published a special report on the activities of Kreševo municipal officials. According to the findings of the federal auditors, the seal of the Municipality of Kreševo in the past years was a “direct agreement”. And while the law on public procurement is precise, according to which “direct agreement” deals can be concluded up to six thousand KM, the municipality of Kreševo, according to the auditor, interpreted this law flexibly, so several jobs were paid for without calling for tenders and with specific conditions.
“On the basis of a direct agreement, 113 purchases were made with a total amount of 413,348 KM, while the largest amount was paid to the company Građevinarstvo Baja Kreševo in the amount of 16,429 KM for the execution of works on the installation of lighting,” the report stated. Misbeads
Source: www.capital.ba
