The Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has indicted Jelena Majstorović, the suspended head of the Anti-smuggling and Misdemeanour Group at the Regional Centre of the Indirect Taxation Authority (ITA) in Banja Luka, along with four suspended inspectors: Stevo Savić, Radenko Popović, Vladimir Đurđević, and Vladimir Puzić.
The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina confirmed the indictment in early March 2025.
They were arrested in late 2022 during Operation “Brend IV”, which also led to the arrest of Elvis Džaferagić, another ITA BiH inspector. The Prosecutor’s Office has charged them with conspiracy to commit criminal offences, abuse of office, and document forgery.
Majstorović, Popović, and Savić were detained for a month, while Puzić, Đurđević, and Džaferagić were released after being questioned by the Prosecutor’s Office. After serving the one-month detention, the Court of BiH placed Majstorović, along with Popović and Savić, under house arrest, with restrictions on communicating and meeting with the accused and witnesses.
Six months before their arrest, CIN journalists revealed that these inspectors had been demanding bribes from shop owners who had violated regulations, in exchange for not confiscating their merchandise.
Shopkeepers across BiH paid anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand marks
to have inspectors issue them lower fines or allow them to continue operating as usual.
In the motion for custody, prosecutor Elvira Stanojlović stated that the prosecution had collected 26 witness statements, at least twenty of which were given by injured parties or persons who were present at the time when the suspects committed illegal acts, expressing fear that the suspects might sway the witnesses if they were released.
She added that the suspects operated as an organised group from 2017 to 2020, with Jelena Majstorović being the organizer and leader of the group.
“When there are so many witnesses, some of whom are senior persons who do not have a single reason not to tell the truth, then there is really no doubt about the veracity of the statements, i.e., no reason to doubt the accuracy thereof,” said prosecutor Stanojlović.
Jelena Majstorović has been working at ITA BiH since February 2013. Ten years earlier, she was fired from NLB Bank in Prnjavor. The bank sued her for the crime and Majstorović was sentenced to a suspended prison sentence in 2005. She was 26 at the time. At her request, the conviction was deleted from the court records in 2016, by which time she had been working under a service contract for the ITA BiH for three years.
An employee of an institution in BiH may not be convicted of a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment of three years or more, while a civil servant may not be convicted at all.
Shortly after the verdict was deleted, in April 2018, Majstorović was hired as a civil servant in the Tax Department, and ten days later, Director Miro Džakula rendered an internal decision returning her to the Anti-smuggling and Misdemeanour Group, where she worked while she was hired on a service contract. At the end of 2018, Džakula temporarily appointed her head of the Group. She was permanently appointed to this position in 2020.
