The Sarajevo Cantonal Court has issued a temporary injunction on an 80 m2 apartment purchased by Elmedin Karišik, owner of Plaza Group on behalf of his company for 280,000 BAM.
Karišik purchased the property in the city center in 2022, coinciding with the time frame of the criminal offenses for which he is suspected by the Cantonal Prosecutor’s Office of the Sarajevo Canton. Subsequently, the apartment was advertised on Booking, with Hamza Karišik, the brother of the Plaza Group owner, listed as the host and lessor.
Additionally, this property was never listed in the company’s assets, so the Prosecutor’s Office suspected that it was acquired through criminal activity and therefore needed to be secured.
In this case, the Cantonal Prosecutor’s Office suspects the former Mayor of Stari Grad Municipality, Ibrahim Hadžibajrić, and his family friend Elmedin Karišik of orchestrating an organized crime group to illegally profit from public car parks managed by the municipality. Suspects also include Hadžibajrić’s son Seid and former Municipality Secretary Alma Destanović who are believed to have executed assigned tasks as part of the group.
Former mayor Hadžibajrić took over control of several of the most profitable car parks in downtown Sarajevo from their previous operators. He then leased these parking lots to Karišik’s Plaza Group and the companies EuroPark, Parking Tim, and Šemrani, all of which were formally established by Karišik’s friends and employees of the Plaza Group.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, Hadžibajrić had previously agreed to the profit-sharing arrangements for these car parks. He coordinated these agreements through his son Seid, who communicated with Karišik via the Sky application, as previously reported by CIN.
The court issued a preliminary injunction on these car parks at the beginning of 2024, and before that, on a building near Sarajevo’s Hastahana Park – estimated to be worth over one million KM – both of which were transferred to the FBiH Seized Property Management Agency.
The Prosecutor’s Office of the Sarajevo Canton also requested the restraining order for Hadžibajrić’s apartment in Krvavica near Makarska, Croatia, but the decision of the competent court is still pending.
