The Brčko District Prosecutor’s Office has charged assembly representative Alija Denjagić with voter bribery during the elections. He is accused of organising a group to influence voters through bribery to secure their votes. In addition to Denjagić, ten other individuals have been charged.
The investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office and Brčko District police initiated ahead of the 2024 Local Elections, revealed that Denjagić assembled a group that, under his direction and using his funds, bribed voters to ensure he received enough votes for a seat in the District Assembly.
Denjagić, representing the Turkish national minority, secured 274 votes and won another term in the Assembly. He began his term while in custody, as the investigation against him was still ongoing. After his release, he resumed his duties in the Assembly.
Judicial authorities had previously implicated representative Denjagić in criminal activities. In the spring of 2023, he was charged alongside Enida Osmanović-Stevanović, president of the local association United National Minorities (SNM), with abuse of office. They were accused of misusing Brčko District grants to secure financial benefits for themselves and others.
According to the indictment, between 2018 and 2021, Denjagić unlawfully gained over BAM 32,000, causing financial damage to the Association and the Brčko District. Osmanović-Stevanović, allegedly abused her position to allow Denjagić to use part of the funds allocated to the Association through grants for its regular operations for his personal needs.
Before the indictment was filed, journalists from the Centre for Investigative Reporting (CIN) uncovered that over two years, Denjagić allocated more than BAM 620,000 to various associations through budget amendments and then demanded that they return a portion of the money to him. The SNM, an association founded by his close friends and where his ex-wife also worked, thus received BAM 151,000.
At that time, CIN journalists uncovered that assembly members in Brčko were using grant money to buy votes in elections, while their friends from various associations spent the funds without any oversight.
Following an investigation by CIN, the Brčko District Prosecutor’s Office filed five indictments related to the misuse of grants in Brčko.
Among those charged are Alen Mujkić, who is responsible for the Sportaš and the Centre for Tourism and Culture associations, and Sead Zahirović, former head of the Brčko Democratic Forum and the Zenan Foundation. They are accused of abuse of office, corruption, and money laundering in connection with the misuse of grants from the Brčko District budget.
Ćazim Dačaj, a former representative in the Brčko District Assembly, was sentenced to four years in prison for abusing his position in awarding grants to local citizen associations. He was also stripped of assets worth BAM 131,000, which he had gained through criminal activity, and banned from holding a representative office for five years.
Edin Ražanica, president of the Centre for Democracy association, was also convicted. The Basic Court in Brčko District sentenced him to four months in prison, in a non-final ruling, for using about BAM 40,000 of funds the association received from the Brčko District Government for personal expenses.
