The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina has handed a first-instance verdict sentencing Nedim Uzunović, former director of Bosnalijek, to ten years in prison for money laundering, abuse of office, and entering into harmful contracts that caused the pharmaceutical company multimillion-mark losses.
Prison sentences of one year each were also imposed on Uzunović’s wife, Jasmina, his father, Sead, sister-in-law Alma Turajlić, Munir and Nadija Ćukle, Vedad Tuzović, and Bogdan Joković. The court stated that, as members of the organised group led by Uzunović, they participated in money laundering. The companies Serreta Investing from Sarajevo, Libero 5, and Turist Best from Konjic were also convicted of the same criminal offence.
The verdict also ordered the confiscation of illegally obtained assets totaling BAM 6.27 million, along with shares and real estate. The three companies controlled by Uzunović and members of his group were fined a total of BAM 7.5 million.
Former Bosnalijek director Nedim Uzunović had BAM 2.86 million seized, along with shares in the company Turist Best and the family’s residential building in Sarajevo. His wife had BAM 347,000 confiscated, his father, Sead, had BAM 235,000, nearly four dunums of land at Boračko Lake, and shares in the Konjic-based company. Uzunović’s sister-in-law had around BAM 359,000 and a 28-square-metre studio apartment in Sarajevo seized.
The court found that between 2005 and 2016, Uzunović, while serving as director of Bosnalijek’s representative office in Russia, established the offshore companies Impericon Alliance Corporation in the Seychelles and Serrata Investing Inc in the British Virgin Islands, through which he concluded fictitious contracts for marketing and consultancy services. Illegally obtained Bosnalijek funds were transferred to accounts under his control in Latvia and Cyprus. The money was then moved to companies in BiH, which, together with Uzunović, were controlled by other members of the organised criminal group.
According to the indictment filed by the BiH Prosecutor’s Office, Bosnalijek suffered losses of BAM 10.85 million, while Uzunović and his accomplices used the embezzled funds to invest in private businesses and purchase movable and immovable property in both BiH and Croatia.
