Alija Denjagić, MP of the Brčko District Assembly has been arrested in Operation “Buyer” on suspicion of organising vote buying in the 2024 local elections to secure a third consecutive term.

The Basic Court in Brčko has ordered one month of pre-trial detention for Denjagić, Suvad Tabaković, and Amer Hadžić at the request of the Brčko District Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), while Admira Ramić and Sadmir Duraković were detained earlier. They are suspected of bribing voters to secure a term for Denjagić.

In its order to expand the investigation, the Orosecutor’s Office stated that Representative Denjagić organized this group to bribe voters and secure enough votes in the 2024 local elections, with Ramić, Tabaković, Hadžić, and Duraković acting on his instructions.

The prosecutor’s office suspects that members of the group supplied personal information about voters to Admira Ramić, who collected the data, compiled lists of secured votes, and handed them over to Denjagić. He then gave the group members money to pay off selected voters.

Ramić, Duraković, and Tabaković were arrested on election day, but only Ramić was kept in one-month detention. The Prosecutor’s Office and police subsequently expanded the investigation to include Hadžić and the group’s organizer, Denjagić.

According to the data from the Central Election Commission (CEC) of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Alija Denjagić secured his mandate again after winning 274 votes as a representative of the Turkish national minority.

According to the law, he has the right to serve as a representative even though he is suspected of committing the crime of violating voters’ free will.

“There are specific provisions outlining when a term ends or cannot be granted, and this only occurs if there is a final court ruling sentencing the candidate to more than six months in prison. Detention does not mean the candidate cannot be granted a term,” explained CEC spokesperson Maksida Pirić.

Alija Denjagić Already Accused Of Corruption

Judicial institutions have previously linked Representative Alija Denjagić to criminal activities.

In the spring of 2023, the Brčko District Prosecutor’s Office charged him with abusing his position, along with Enida Osmanović-Stevanović, the president of a local citizens’ association, to secure financial benefits for themselves and others through Brčko grants.

According to the indictment, from 2018 to 2021, Denjagić obtained financial benefits exceeding BAM 32,000, causing damage to the Citizens’ Association “Sjedinjene nacionalne manjine” (SNM) [United National Minorities]” and the Brčko District.  The president of the association, Osmanović-Stevanović, allegedly abused her position to allow Denjagić and his associates to use part of the funds allocated to the SNM through operational grants for personal purposes.

Before the charges were filed, CIN reporters revealed that Denjagić had allocated more than BAM 620,000 to associations through budget amendments over two years and subsequently requested that they return a portion of the money to him. The SNM, the association founded by his close friends and where his ex-wife also worked, thus received BAM 151,000.

Denjagić declined to comment on the matter to reporters.

At that time, CIN journalists uncovered that assembly members in Brčko were using grant money to buy votes in elections, while their friends from various associations spent the funds without any oversight.

After the release of the CIN story, the Brčko Basic Court sentenced Ćazim Dačaj, a former deputy of the Brčko District Assembly, to four years in prison for abusing his position in awarding grants to local citizens’ associations. His property worth 131 thousand BAM was confiscated.

Old Vote Buying Practices in the Brčko District

A year earlier, CIN journalists uncovered a network of vote traders in Brčko during the 2020 local elections.  The investigation led to the arrest and conviction of vote traders Elvir Saletović and Sanel Pengić, who received a combined sentence of two years and four months in prison, pending appeal.

The Brčko court had previously issued rulings related to electoral fraud: former representative of the Croat Peasant Party (HSS) Pejo Mendeš was sentenced to six months in prison for preparing a voting fraud scheme ahead of the 2020 local elections, while his accomplices, Jasmin Ravkić and Mato Gluhaković, received sentences of four and two months in prison, respectively.

The three of them used citizens’ IDs, taking photographs of them without their knowledge and submitting them to the CEC as a form for registering to vote from abroad.

Before that, Radoslav Bogićević and Nenad Kojić, former representatives of the People’s Democratic Movement (NDP) in the Brčko District Assembly, had also been convicted for the same offense and sentenced to four months in prison.