A convicted drug dealer, a vote trafficker, and a forger will soon have the opportunity to judge the work of the Prosecutor’s Office in Brčko – the institution that has proven their criminal acts. These convicted individuals are now members of the newly elected Brčko District Assembly, where the prosecutor will be required to submit an annual report on the work of the prosecution.
Abdulah Iljazović from Naša stranka, Pejo Mendeš from the Hrvatska seljačka stranka, and Damir Bulčević from Narod i pravda have all been convicted, while independent MP Alija Denjagić has one conviction for certifying false content and one confirmed indictment for grant misuse. He is currently suspected of vote buying during the elections.
When asked how he felt about having to “justify” his work before politicians he had once investigated, prosecutor Mujkanović responded that “the situation was not normal!”
However, these convicts, who were elected to the Assembly, can still hold their positions without hindrance. According to Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Election Law, the Central Election Commission (CIK) can only revoke their mandates if they are sentenced to six months or more in prison during their term.
„We are representatives of the people, and I believe there were [people] who have been convicted but still voted, and their vote is just as important as that of those who have never been convicted“, said Iljazović.
In mid-November 2024, the representatives of the citizens in the Brčko District Assembly took an oath to conscientiously perform the duties entrusted to them in the elections. The 31 members will decide on the allocation of at least one billion BAM, which is the average four-year budget of Brčko District.
One of the elected officials, Zoran Kokanović, who was convicted of domestic violence, has since continued his political career in the National Assembly of the Republika Srpska.
Beginning of the Term in the Calm of Detention
The new term of the Brčko District Assembly officially began in November 2024, but not in full capacity. Representative Alija Denjagić started his mandate under turbulent circumstances. He was released from detention on suspicion of vote-buying during the 2024 Local Elections after the prosecution interrogated all witnesses.
While securing a seat in the Brčko District Assembly usually required around 1,400 votes, gaining one of the two positions reserved for national minorities was much easier. Denjagić, a member of the Turkish national minority, was elected with just 276 votes, marking his third consecutive term.
The Brčko District Prosecutor’s Office suspects Denjagić of organising a group to bribe voters to secure enough votes for his seat in the Assembly. The Basic Court in Brčko has placed him in detention, along with other group members.
Prosecutors believe the group gathered personal data on voters and provided it to Denjagić, who then gave them money to pay off selected voters.
Denjagić had previously been investigated for the misuse of Brčko grants. In the spring of 2023, he was accused, along with Enida Osmanović-Stevanović, president of a local citizens’ association, of abusing their positions to secure financial benefits for themselves and others through grants.
The indictment alleges that between 2018 and 2021, Denjagić caused a loss of over BAM 32,000 to the “United National Minorities” Citizens’ Association and Brčko District. Osmanović-Stevanović exploited her position to allow Denjagić to use part of the funds allocated to the association for personal purposes.
The charges came after journalists from the Centre for Investigative Reporting (CIN) revealed that Denjagić, through budget amendments, allocated more than BAM 620,000 to various associations over two years, subsequently demanding a portion of the funds back.
The “United National Minorities” Association, founded by his close friends and where his ex-wife worked, thus received BAM 151,000.
CIN journalists also uncovered that assembly members in Brčko used grant funds to buy votes in elections, while their friends from various associations spent the money without any oversight.
The Basic Court of Brčko District convicted Denjagić in 2016 for certifying false documents. He was given a three-month suspended sentence, meaning he will avoid prison unless he commits another crime within two years. He was convicted for submitting a forged document to the Brčko District Government eight years earlier while serving as the owner and director of the security and trade company “Poskok”.
He had applied for a tender for security services for the Government, submitting a fraudulent certificate from the Republika Srpska Fund about his pension and disability insurance contribution.
Under Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Election Law, Denjagić would only lose his seat if he were sentenced to more than six months in prison.
„I won’t speculate on how this will unfold in court, but there is a theoretical possibility that the Chief Prosecutor of Brčko District, or his replacement, could present a report in the Assembly tomorrow, alongside other representatives—to him (Denjagić)“, says Mujkanović, the Chief Prosecutor of the Brčko District Prosecutor’s Office.
The Votes from the Neighborhood for Mendeš and the HSS [Croat Peasant Party]
Pejo Mendeš, a Brčko native and member of the HSS, was first elected to the Brčko District Assembly in the 2016 Local Elections. He aimed to secure a second term but was behind bars by the 2020 elections, charged with accepting a bribe and other forms of benefits and preparing to commit a criminal act.
Mendeš abused his position as a representative by promising Jasmin Ravkić, a fellow Brčko resident, that he would arrange for him to serve community service instead of the three-month prison sentence Ravkić received in mid-2020 for stealing firewood. Mendeš had previously helped Ravkić’s relative, Raif Ravkić, in a similar manner.
In return, Ravkić agreed to obtain personal data from the ID cards of his neighbours and close family members, which Mendeš intended to use to manipulate votes in the 2020 elections for those living outside Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The plan was for political parties to register fake voters for absentee voting from Serbia and Croatia in order to obtain the ballots. However, the ballots were never meant to be sent to the registered addresses abroad; instead, they were intended to be redirected to the parties’ headquarters.
“I was with him and Pejo Mendeš when they were talking. He said to Pejo, ‘Try to help, and I’ll gather 50 ID cards for voting.’ Do you understand?” Raif Ravkić recounted to CIN journalists four years ago.
Jasmin Ravkić tricked at least 20 of his neighbours, including his own parents, into giving him their ID card details. He claimed he needed the information to gather signatures for a petition to reduce his prison sentence to community service. Eager to help, they provided their details, unaware that their personal information would end up on absentee voter lists from Croatia and Serbia.
In 2022, Mendeš was sentenced to six months in prison, but he was able to run in the 2024 local elections as if nothing had happened. He was elected with 955 votes.
He declined to speak in detail with CIN journalists outside the Assembly, briefly responding: “The citizens of Brčko District have decided. I won the mandate. That mandate is recognised, and now I am in the District Assembly.”
Prosecutor Mujkanović emphasises the need for higher standards when it comes to the integrity of public officials.
“It should be expected that political parties, as key players, promote moral values in a positive direction. This is certainly a better approach than simply saying, yes, he was sentenced to six months in prison for abuse of office, but the people re-elected him.”
Political Parties Are Only After Votes
Abdulah Iljazović from Brčko was sentenced in 2019 to four months in prison for drug trafficking. According to the court ruling, he was involved in purchasing marijuana and selling it in 100-gram quantities.
Iljazović has switched political parties three times: first, he was a member of Narod i pravda, then Stranka za BiH, and finally settled with Naša stranka. His conviction for drug trafficking did not prevent him from advancing in any of these parties.
“Parties are focused on the number of votes one brings. (…) The conviction was acknowledged, everyone knows about it, everyone is aware of it (…) but I am not inclined to those behaviours anymore”, Iljazović explained.
In the most recent local elections, he was elected to the Brčko District Assembly with 1,733 votes.
In May of this year, the Brčko District Prosecutor’s Office submitted its 2023 Annual Report to the Assembly. The report states that a total of 235 individuals were convicted in 2023. Included in the prosecutor’s statistics is the conviction of the current Speaker of the Brčko District Assembly, Damir Bulčević from the Narod i pravda party, who was previously a member of the Stranka demokratske akcije (SDA).
In the 2024 local elections, he was elected to the Assembly for the third consecutive time, receiving 1,552 votes.
The previous year, Bulčević was sentenced to a conditional prison term of one month, which will not be enforced if he does not commit another crime within a year. He was convicted of falsifying a document in 2018, after submitting a false declaration during his appointment as head of the Inspectorate in the Mayor’s Office of Brčko. In the declaration, he claimed he was not a member of any political party’s governing body, even though he was serving in a position within the SDA at the time.
Bulčević declined to discuss the details of his conviction with journalists, but he did mention that he had appealed the verdict to the Constitutional Court of BiH.
When asked if he thought it was appropriate for individuals with convictions to hold public office in the Assembly, Bulčević stated that “the Election Law of BiH is what it is”. He added that “as long as everything complies with the law and individuals are allowed to hold such positions, the law must be respected”.
Zoran Kokanović, a member of the Socialist Party, is the only one who declined to join the Assembly of Brčko District. He secured 2,020 votes in the recent local elections and is now serving as a member of the National Assembly of the Republika Srpska. In 2012, Kokanović was fined BAM 700 for domestic violence. The verdict stated that in November 2011, he physically and verbally assaulted his wife on two separate occasions.
For months, CIN journalists have been trying to arrange an interview with Kokanović for his profile in the “Politician’s Assets” database. He has repeatedly avoided meeting with the journalists. The database contains information on the careers, incomes, assets, verdicts, and other relevant details of individuals in public office or positions of public interest.
Esad Bajtal, a sociologist and philosopher, argues that political parties prioritise their interests over common sense, morality, and modern democracy.
“They aren’t concerned with the qualities of their members, except in one respect: that they are obedient and will strictly follow whatever the party, the leader, or the party’s top leadership dictates,” he explains.
