Former Bosnalijek director Edin Arslanagić has been sentenced to 12 years in prison, pending appeal, for embezzlement of funds at this pharmaceutical company in Sarajevo.
At the same time, the Sarajevo Canton Court sentenced Arslanagić’s partners in the illegal dealings, Šefik Handžić, former finance director at Bosnalijek, and Hasan Šepo, owner of the catering company Brštanica, to ten years each, and Šepo’s son Jasmin to seven years in prison. Aida Selvić, former accounting clerk at Bosnalijek, was acquitted of charges.
They were convicted of entering into multiple fictitious transactions, siphoning money from the company, and various other abuses committed from 2005 to 2012 through private companies Brštanica and Carpe Diem, thus causing damage of nearly 26 million BAM to the pharmaceutical company and public budgets.
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Originally, Arslanagić’s son Amar was also accused of embezzlement at Bosnalijek, but the indictment against him was dropped because he fled to the United States in 2016. A year earlier, Amar Arslanagić was sentenced to one year in prison for embezzling Bosnalijek’s money during official trips around the world. He commuted the prison sentence into a fine of 36,000 BAM and had to reimburse the company 71,500 BAM in damages.
.According to information collected by the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIN), the total value of real estate, savings, and shares owned by the Arslanagić family in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the United States exceeds 13 million BAM.
By the decision of the court, today Edin Arslanagić and other convicts had their real estate, money, and shares valued at over 20 million BAM confiscated. In 2016, the court had already frozen most of the assets belonging to Edin Arslanagić’s family in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the assets of his sons, Vedad and Amar, in the United States remained beyond the reach of the Bosnian judicial system, as previously reported by CIN.
