The City of Zenica, led by Mayor Fuad Kasumović, had offered his wife Mersija a public plot in the city centre three times larger than the land she owned on the outskirts of town, land whose size “on the paper” had been increased by 730 square metres.
CIN reporters found that the proposed property swap would have left the city out of pocket by at least BAM 255,000.
Under a proposal by the Zenica City Administration, Mersija Kasumović was to receive nearly 11.5 dunums of land in the city centre, along with BAM 78,000 in cash, in exchange for almost four dunums of land in Perin Han, at the southern entrance to the city.
However, the exchange proposal showed her land as being 730 square metres larger than it actually is, inflating its value by roughly a quarter of a million marks.
Although the expropriation process has been ongoing for three years, neither the relevant municipal departments, the court-appointed expert, the municipal attorney’s office, nor the Kasumović couple raised any concerns about the erroneous data in the documents before the City Council session.
Armela Beganović, deputy municipal attorney for Zenica, declined to speak to CIN reporters. At the City Council session held on 10 March 2026, she briefly told them to contact the prosecutor’s office if they had any objections. Nevertheless, councillors adopted the decision, adding a proviso that the errors highlighted by CIN reporters would be corrected at a later stage.
In fact, the City Administration had issued expropriation decisions for the very same plot – cadastral parcel no. 448/21 – first in 2023 and then again in 2026, creating the impression that two different plots were involved.
The city administration then engaged court-appointed valuer Stanko Bagarić, who counted the same parcel twice in the final calculation of the land area. As a result, the total area grew from the actual 3,258 square metres to 3,988 square metres.
According to Bagarić’s assessment, Mersija Kasumović’s land in Perin Han is worth BAM 350 per square metre. He therefore valued it at a total of BAM 1,396,045, while estimating the value of the city’s 11.5 dunums of land at BAM 1,318,130.
Bagarić was unavailable for comment as he was abroad. Kasumović himself could not be reached, while his office directed reporters to submit questions by email.
A Quarter-Million-Mark Error
The land owned by Mersija Kasumović forms part of the couple’s marital property, meaning that any real estate transaction would require her husband’s consent. In effect, as an informal co-owner of the property, the mayor would have been entering into a deal with himself.
The proposal for the land swap first appeared on the agenda of the Zenica City Council session scheduled for 5 March 2026, but the meeting never took place after councillors from the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) walked out before the agenda was put to a vote. They argued that the proposed exchange was detrimental to the city because the Kasumović couple would receive a far more valuable property than the one they were giving up.
At the next session, held five days later, a CIN reporter asked Emir Delić, the mayor’s assistant for property-legal affairs, geodetic work, and the land cadastre, who had signed the expropriation decision, about the duplication of the same parcel. He said he had not noticed the mistake and thanked the reporters from the podium for bringing it to his attention.
Mersija Kasumović’s land lies within the scope of the “Zenica-South” regulatory plan, where infrastructure works have begun for a future business, tourism, and recreational zone.
In this case, her husband’s administration moved with notable efficiency. The regulatory plan was adopted in December 2022, during Kasumović’s second term as mayor.
Less than two and a half months later, an expropriation study was prepared for land owned by four proprietors, including parcels belonging to Mersija Kasumović. By March 2023, the municipal attorney’s office had already proposed expropriation, and the following month, the city secured an assessment of the market value of the properties. The Sarajevo-based company “Expertiza” valued the land at nearly BAM 353,000, and an expropriation decision was issued as early as May 2023.
However, the mayor’s wife subsequently requested a new valuation, arguing that inflation had led to significant changes in property prices.
