A member of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA), Denijal Tulumović received a severance of 34,776 BAM in February 2025, during the third year of his parliamentary mandate. The payment is granted once eligibility for retirement is met.
After receiving the payout, Tulumović continued his work in the state parliament. From March to the end of July 2025, this allowed him to collect a further 37,502 BAM in salaries and allowances, including meal subsidies, holiday pay, transport, flat-rate expenses, and compensation for living away from home. Under current regulations, he is entitled to receive both a parliamentary salary and a pension at the same time.
Tulumović has yet to receive his first pension payment and does not know the exact amount. “I cannot say with certainty until I get the calculation, which is currently being processed. Perhaps this month,” he explained.
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Severance payments equivalent to six net monthly salaries are awarded to employees who reach the age of 65 with at least 20 years of service, or 40 years of total service, to ease the transition into retirement after decades of work.
Since graduating from the Medical School in Tuzla in 1985, Denijal Tulumović has spent almost his entire career working as a physician in healthcare institutions in Tuzla, Srebrenica, and Banovići. From 2000 onwards, he was engaged as a senior assistant, lecturer, and associate professor at the faculty where he had graduated. In 2020, he was appointed a full professor. He has continued in this capacity as an external associate.
Tulumović entered politics at the local level, winning a seat in the 2016 municipal elections, when he also became deputy chair of the Živinice Municipal Council. Two years later, he was elected to the Parliament of the Federation of BiH.
In 2019, he was appointed Prime Minister of the Tuzla Canton Government, a position he held for a year and a half before stepping down following a shift in the ruling majority in the Cantonal Assembly.
Running as a candidate for the SDA in the 2022 general elections, Tulumović won more than 32,000 votes for a seat in the state parliament. In his asset declaration at the time, he reported owning a family house in his native Živinice, a holiday home in Banovići, as well as two apartments in Tuzla and Sarajevo. He also listed 280,000 BAM in bank accounts, which he stated came from the sale of inherited property. In his declaration, he also reported driving a Range Rover Evoque valued at 40,000 BAM. Altogether, he assessed his assets at 1.02 million BAM and stated that he had no outstanding loans.
Tulumović believes that politicians in Bosnia and Herzegovina are overpaid: “I really think this needs to change because over these last 30 years the average citizen has been living on minimal earnings, while parliamentarians truly enjoy high salaries,” he said.
Some 684,000 BAM has been paid out in severance packages since 2010 to 23 office-holders from the BiH Parliament, Council of Ministers, and the Presidency.
Most of them, like Tulumović, continued to work after receiving the payout. This includes current state MPs Nebojša Radmanović, Nikola Špirić, and Sredoje Novićić from the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), Dragan Čović, president of the Croatian Democratic Union of BiH (HDZ BiH), and Šefik Džaferović from the SDA.
Elected and appointed officials, as well as other employees of state institutions, are entitled to severance packages based on the Law on Salaries and Remunerations in the Institutions of BiH and the Decision on the entitlement to severance pay upon retirement from institutions.
The Centre for Investigative Reporting (CIN) previously reported that, in state institutions, 17.5 million BAM was paid in severance to 1,973 employees between the start of 2010 and March 2021. Thanks to average salaries of around 4,800 BAM, the largest severance payments went to elected and appointed officials.
