The Cantonal Court in Bihać has convicted Fikret Abdić, the former Mayor of Velika Kladuša, with a first-instance verdict, sentencing him to three and a half years in prison and ordering him to pay nearly half a million marks in damages to the Municipality.
He was convicted of using his official position and political influence to unlawfully and unconstitutionally adopt the 2019 and 2020 Budget for the Municipality of Velika Kladuša, with the aim of allocating funds to the Association for the protection of unemployed shareholders of Agrokomerc and the Opšta kladuška zadruga [Engl. General Kladuša Co-operative], both of which he managed and had decisive influence over. He can appeal this verdict.
In March 2021, the Cantonal Prosecutor’s Office of the Una-Sana Canton (USK) charged Fikret Abdić along with several others, including municipal officials Sulejman and Sanja Silić, Fikret Pajazetović, Selim Kajtezović, and Fatma Galijašević, an employee of the design bureau S.E.N.N.S.A from Velika Kladuša, and Hašim Grahović, the founder of the surveying bureau FotoGeo in Velika Kladuša. They faced multiple criminal charges, including abuse of office and authority, as well as violations of equality in business operations. Abdić’s case was later separated from those of the others who had admitted guilt.
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The Centre for Investigative Journalism first reported on Abdić’s misuse of the Velika Kladuša Municipality’s budget in mid-2018.
In the story “Babo’s Advisors Chasing Two Rabbits”, CIN revealed how Fikret Abdić proposed a grant in the 2017 municipal budget for financing the Association for the Protection of Unemployed Shareholders of Agrokomerc — a grant that did not exist in previous years. At the time, Abdić was president of the Association’s management.
After his proposal was approved, Abdić left the Association’s management, and the Association received 250,000 BAM, nearly a third of the total funds allocated for all non-profit organizations in Velika Kladuša. This organisation represented shareholders and former employees of Agrokomerc, a food industry company founded and led by Fikret Abdić for two decades before the war. After the war, the company became state-owned under the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) and was transformed into a joint-stock company.
In addition to founding the food company Agrokomerc, Fikret Abdić—known to the public as Babo—is infamous for establishing the unconstitutional Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia (Autonomna pokrajina Zapadna Bosna – APZB) during the war, whose forces fought against the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina. After APZB’s defeat, he fled to Croatia.
In 2005, the Supreme Court of Croatia sentenced him to 15 years in prison for war crimes against civilians and prisoners of war. He was released after serving two-thirds of his sentence. Abdić returned to politics in 2016, winning the mayoral election in Velika Kladuša, and was re-elected in 2020, serving until 2024.
In this court proceedings, he was acquitted of charges related to unlawful procurement involving the Velika Kladuša-based design bureau S.E.N.N.S.A, which allegedly had a monopoly on preparing documentation for urban planning and building permits.
Those involved in the procurement scheme—including the Silić couple, Pajazetović, Kajtezović, Galijašević, and Grahović—were convicted in 2021 through plea agreements.
Sulejman Silić was the unofficial driving force behind the design bureau S.E.N.N.S.A., although it was formally registered under Hašim Grahović as founder and Fatma Galijašević as director. Silić simultaneously held a managerial position within the Velika Kladuša municipal government.
Silić’s wife, Sanja, who worked as a surveyor in the municipal cadastre department, directed citizens to have their planning and construction project documentation prepared by the S.E.N.S.S.A. bureau. Municipal officials Pajazetović and Kajtezović were responsible for organising public procurement procedures, through which contracts for design and supervision services were awarded to this same bureau.
Between December 2016 and January 2020, S.E.N.S.S.A. received contracts worth just over 48,000 BAM from the municipal budget.
Silić was sentenced to one year in prison and banned from holding senior civil service roles for ten years. Sanja, his wife, has been prohibited from taking on any role as a municipal employee in the Velika Kladuša cadastre department for five years. At the same time, officials Pajazetović and Kajtezović have been restricted from engaging in any public procurement activities within the civil service for three years. All of them, except for Sulejman Silić, were given suspended prison sentences.
