Among the members of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska (NARS) sits businessman Zoran Kokanović. After serving two terms in the Brčko District Assembly, he entered the NSRS in early 2023, taking over the seat of his party leader from the Socialist Party of Republika Srpska.
By that time, Kokanović was already well-versed in both politics and business. The public had also become aware of details from his private life – back in 2012, the Basic Court in Brčko fined him 700 BAM for domestic violence. That year, at the age of 35, he assaulted his then-wife twice. The court deemed that a monetary fine would suffice as punishment, citing that it was his first conviction and he had pledged not to repeat the offence.
Five years earlier, he had earned a degree from the Faculty of Service Management in Doboj, which was shut down in the same year. Nonetheless, his official biography listed the institution as a School of Economics.
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Upon entering the Brčko District Assembly in 2016, he switched party allegiance from the Napredna Srpska [Engl. Progressive Srpska] to the Socialist Party and began actively engaging in politics, though he never stepped away from his private business ventures.
The betting, gambling, and river material exploitation businesses continued to flourish. After entering the National Assembly of Republika Srpska, he declared assets in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia valued at 4.8 million BAM and reported an annual income of nearly 1.5 million BAM.
However, Centre for Investigative Reporting (CIN) reveals that Kokanović and his companies also own additional, undeclared property in Brčko, including residential buildings, apartments, and even a tennis court.
His 26-year-old son, Nikola, has followed in his father’s footsteps, launching a lucrative business of his own. He is the owner of the betting and gambling company Betting BD in Brčko, but despite his young age, he has already been convicted four times and faces two additional indictments for serious criminal offences.
In the Assembly, in a provided seat
MP Zoran Kokanović stated in his official biography on the Brčko District Assembly website that he is an economist with a degree from the School of Economics in Doboj. However, when establishing this, now former, employment relationship, he submitted a diploma for completing a three-year programme in the School of Service Management in Doboj, specifically the Public Service Management programme.
This school was shut down in 2007 due to not meeting the requirements to continue its operations, yet Kokanović graduated from this school in the same year.
In an attempt to explain this inconsistency, he insisted in a brief phone conversation with CIN that his diploma states “a graduate in economics”.
“You’ll see the diploma when you come; I have no secrets,” he said, but at the time of the call, he was unavailable for a meeting. When contacted several months later, he responded: “I don’t want to talk to you at all.”
Kokanović has frequently criticised others in the Brčko District Assembly and during public appearances: “Our children study at prestigious universities and come here to apply for any job, while the members of the commission have bought degrees, not to mention the Department heads who also hold fake diplomas. And what will those children be looking for here?” he said in May 2021 on the eBrčko.net portal.
Kokanović won his first term in the Brčko District Assembly in the 2016 local elections as a member of Napredna Srpska, but just five months later, he switched to the Socialist Party, taking on the role of president of the Municipal Board in Brčko.
He secured a second term with this party, but didn’t serve it until the end. After unsuccessful attempts to enter the RS National Assembly in the 2018 and 2022 general elections, his luck turned in March 2023, when his party leader, Petar Đokić, handed him the seat after moving to the position of Republika Srpska Minister of Energy and Mining.
According to the asset declaration he filed in June 2024, his salary is around 3,200 BAM—about 400 BAM more than in the Brčko District Assembly—but this is just a small part of his income. In the same declaration, he reported a total annual income of 1.5 million BAM, with the majority coming from dividends in his company—an impressive 1.29 million BAM. That year, he earned 177,000 BAM from the sale of real estate and received 2,616 BAM every month from property rentals. Additionally, he reported having 344,000 BAM in unpaid receivables and 7,000 BAM in savings.
Betting shops, Gravel quarry, Explosion, and Murder
The name of Zoran Kokanović is associated with four companies: WELD-MAG Sistem and BetOle based in Lopare, as well as WELD MAG and Kokanović based in Brčko.
At the age of 28, he registered WELD-MAG Sistem, a company for the production of computers and equipment in Lopare in 2005, but closed it six years later.
In the meantime, in 2015, Kokanović’s father-in-law, Jovan Savić, gifted him WELD MAG, the company registered in Brčko for foreign trade activities, and with an obtained permit for river material exploitation from the Sava River, for a fee of one mark per cubic meter of extracted material. Public advertisements show that this company sells sand and gravel, with customers including public enterprises like Luka Brčko.
In recent years, the company shifted its focus to gambling and betting, but the Brčko Finance Directorate refused to disclose whether it issued a permit for these activities. At the same time, Kokanović also registered BetOle in Lopare for the same business, with a permit from the RS Administration for Games of Chance for the territory of this entity.
The river material extraction business was continued by the company Kokanović, founded in 2017, which is involved in the construction and sale of commercial and residential buildings. Although no longer formally involved, CIN’s investigation shows that Kokanović remains the beneficial owner of this company.
The formal change of ownership took place in April 2021, after the adoption of the Law on the Prevention of Conflicts of Interest in the Institutions of the Brčko District, which limited private business activities for elected officials. At that time, Kokanović transferred ownership of his companies, WELD MAG and Kokanović, to Sava Vasić from Brčko—free of charge. At the time of the transfer, the combined founding capital of both companies totalled around 660,000 BAM.
A month later, in May 2021, Kokanović stated on the eBrčko portal: “I manage my companies, and thank God, I manage them successfully,” only to correct himself half an hour later, saying that after the law was passed, “he gave away all his companies and is no longer the owner of any of them,” adding that the companies are operating successfully and that workers’ rights are guaranteed.
Vasić passed away in February 2022, and ownership of the companies was inherited by his wife, Sanja. Four months later, Kokanović took over ownership of WELD MAG from her for a nominal sum of 100 BAM. At the time, the company’s registered capital was half a million BAM.
Ownership of the company Kokanović remained in her name.
In a brief phone conversation, Sanja Vasić confirmed to a CIN journalist that she was only a nominal owner. She refused to continue the conversation and referred the journalist to the real owner, Zoran Kokanović.
He, however, declined to discuss himself or his business dealings. “I’m a public figure and you should do your research, but I don’t want to give an interview to anyone,” he said.
The Kokanović name is also linked to the Brčko-based gambling and betting company Betting BD, founded in August 2020 by Zoran’s son, Nikola, with an initial capital of 50,000 BAM. At the time, Nikola was just 21 years old and already had two convictions—one from the Basic Court in Brčko and another from the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina—for property damage and migrant smuggling. Since then, he has been convicted two more times for causing bodily harm.
Nikola is currently facing two more criminal proceedings: one before the District Court in Bijeljina, where he is accused of the murder of police inspector Nenad Marković, and another before the Basic Court in Brčko for charges of endangering public safety.
The case in Brčko was initiated by the District Prosecutor’s Office in mid-November 2021, accusing Nikola Kokanović of paying others several hundred marks to destroy the restaurant Dos Manos with explosives and to set fire to the cars of Serb Democratic Party member Milenko Perendija and Ujedinjena Srpska MP, Uroš Vojnović. The damage caused was estimated at around 150,000 BAM.
“At first, I couldn’t connect anyone to the act of arson. To be honest, it’s a deeply unsettling event—if they can set your car on fire, they can kill you in the street without a second thought,” Vojnović told CIN.
During the proceedings against his son, Kokanović attempted to use his position in the Assembly to pressure the police and Vojnović. In September 2021, during a briefing by Mile Jurošević, head of the Brčko District police cabinet, about police actions in the case, Kokanović claimed the police weren’t doing their job properly, said he didn’t trust them and that they were corrupt, and suggested who they should be investigating and under what circumstances.
“If Nikola is guilty of anything, then he must be held accountable and serve as an example of how one should behave,” Kokanović said at the time.
A few months later, in April 2022, as an MP, he requested employment records from the public utility company Komunalno regarding Uroš Vojnović’s attendance at work.
“I am calling on the relevant authorities, the prosecution and the police, to launch an investigation,” he later said in the Assembly, claiming that the response he received, which he found unsatisfactory, had been falsified.
Nikola Kokanović was sentenced in December 2022 to two years and two months in prison. However, the Brčko District Appellate Court overturned the verdict and sent the case back to the start.
In the meantime, he was also charged with the murder of a police inspector in 2023. According to the indictment raised a year later by the District Prosecutor’s Office in Bijeljina, Nikola allegedly shot and killed an on-duty police officer outside an establishment in the city.
The case is being heard before the District Court in Bijeljina, running in parallel with proceedings in Brčko.
Flats, Buildings, Tennis Courts
When he entered the Brčko District Assembly in 2016, Zoran Kokanović declared an annual income of 29,040 BAM and assets valued at 272,000 BAM: a flat, a house, land, business premises, shares in a company, stocks, and a modest amount of money in the bank.
Eight years later, his asset declaration listed an annual income of 1.5 million BAM and total assets worth 4.8 million BAM.
The bulk of this value stems from founding capital in his companies, WELD MAG and BetOle. In addition, he reported ownership or co-ownership of: three flats, four residential buildings, four garages, six business premises, a construction site, parcels of land, orchards, and forests. These properties are located in Brčko and Lopare, and Belgrade, Serbia.
CIN also discovered that Kokanović and his two companies own other undeclared property in Brčko, totalling around 160,000 square metres: two flats, two residential buildings, a garage, a tennis court with a yard, and several land plots.
Among Kokanović’s assets is a flat in Brčko, located on the same street as his betting shop, BetOle. The flat was gifted to him in 2022 by Vaso Todić, a former stonemason. Kokanović valued this 42-square-metre flat at 20,000 BAM.
Todić told CIN in a brief conversation that he had gifted the flat out of gratitude, claiming that Kokanović had given him money for medical treatment and denying any connection to politics or to Kokanović’s public role: “There was no other way I could repay him,” Todić said, rejecting claims that the gift was related to gambling debts.
“Sometimes I’ll place a small bet—two, three, five marks. But as for slot machines or gambling itself, God forbid, I wouldn’t even think of it,” says Todić.
This gift does not appear in the official register of gifts received by public officials, maintained by the Brčko District’s Commission on Conflicts of Interest. Commission president Admira Mujić explained that it wasn’t required to be listed, as the register tracks a different category of gifts.
“Not that kind of gift, no,” she clarified. “It’s meant for gifts received in the course of performing your official duties—gifts from people visiting in that capacity.”
