The District Commercial Court in Istočno Sarajevo has postponed the first sale of apartments in the Vučko Hotel complex in Jahorina, which was scheduled to recover the loan debt of the company B&B Vučko to the Republika Srpska Investment and Development Bank (IRBRS). A total of 43 apartments, with individual values ranging from 48,000 to 340,000 BAM as estimated by a court-appointed expert, were up for sale.
Although buyers attended the hearing, the auction was postponed because, in the meantime, Banja Luka attorney Miloš Stevanović, through his firm Standard Prva, purchased a total debt of 180 million BAM owed to the IRB, including the debt of B&B Vučko. The court was notified eight days before the scheduled auction, prompting Judge Minja Mirvić to postpone the hearing to facilitate a change in the execution claimant.
In 2012, B&B Vučko secured a six-million-mark loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) for investment projects in the Republka Srpska. Loan related documents show that the IRB provided the EIB with incorrect information about the loan’s purpose and usage.
Despite this, the IRB insists that it did not make any errors in the loan’s approval process. In May 2022, CIN reported that B&B Vučko owed nearly 12 million marks, including interest, however, the IRB did not respond to queries about the debt status for 2023 and 2024. The bank has also ignored inquiries regarding the debt status of other companies that received EIB funding.
Meanwhile, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has been repaying the loan, as the state was a signatory to a 2009 agreement with the EIB for a 50 million euro loan. The agreement specified that the funds were to be used for financing investment projects in the Republika Srpska through the Development and Employment Fund of the IRBRS.
The IRBRS allocated funds to 16 companies, but some, including B&B Vučko, misused the funds and failed to make regular loan payments.
By the end of 2022, Bosnia and Herzegovina owed the EIB 12.1 million marks for the project financing through the IRBRS. The IRBRS and the Ministry of Finance of BiH have yet to provide CIN with updated information on the current debt status.
B&B Vučko is managed by father and son Milomir and Aleksandar Prović, who, along with investors from Serbia and Russia, developed the Vučko Htel-apartment complex in Jahorina. “What problem do you or anyone has with that? The state is repaying it and the state will collect it” commented Aleksandar Prović to CIN in 2023 regarding the financial difficulties faced by his business.
CIN has revealed that the construction of the Vučko complex has been plagued by falsified documents, deceived partners, and substantial debts over the years. The Prović family was given access to state land in Jahorina by local authorities and received multi-million mark loans from entity-level authorities.
Journalists have uncovered that the IRB approved a loan to B&B Vučko based on falsified documentation regarding the pledge of real estate in Jahorina. The properties in question belonged to Club Aparthotel Vučko which was co-owned by the Prović family along with investors Mirko Tica from Serbia and Dragan Đordan from Russia. These investors never authorized the use of the properties as collateral for the loan. Nonetheless, in 2012, the Provićs provided the IRB with a forged decision from the Club Aparthotel Vučko Assembly, falsely pledging the company’s apartments as mortgage collateral. The properties are now set to be sold at auction.
“How did they do this, based on what, on which assembly decision? They act so confidently, arrogantly, brazenly, and unscrupulously”, said Dragan Đordan, an investor who has been struggling for years to recover the 13 million marks he invested in the construction of apartments in the Vučko complex.
In the transcript from the Assembly meeting where investors contested the property pledge, Mirko Tica remarked: “The mortgaging process was unlawful and insinuates criminal conduct. As a human being, I cannot comprehend this.”
According to the documentation submitted to the IRB, the real estate in Jahorina was mortgaged by Ana Kovačević, the sister of Aleksandar Prović, who was the director of Club Aparthotel Vučko at the time.
She signed documents stating that the co-owners of the company at the extraordinary general meeting held in March 2012 via teleconference, approved the pledging of the property. However, none of the co-owners attended this general meeting nor did they sign the company’s agreement to pledge the property. As it turned out, Kovačević made this document five months earlier and attached it to the loan application.
Notary Gordana Gerdijan, who certified the mortgage, told CIN: “How could I know that these were fake documents, all of which were signed and , with a seal, if the bank had their credit committee there, the references?”
At that time, in 2012, Aleksandar Džombić, the Prime Minister of the RS and Chairman of the Credit Committee, a family friend of the Provićs, decided to grant the loan. Džombić had also approved a 5 million BAM IRB loan for them in 2009, hastening messages to the then-IRB director to urgently approve the loan for B&B Vučko.
The District Prosecutor’s Office in Istočno Sarajevo has suspended the investigation into Prović for falsifying documentation related to the IRB loan. Prosecutor Halida Vrabac told CIN that she “doubts that the IRB would have approved the loan if the documents had been falsified”.
Despite this, the apartments— which the investors never consented to pledge for the loan—are now being auctioned to settle the debt of B&B Vučko with the IRBRS.
