Following the order issued by the Sarajevo Canton Prosecutor’s Office, the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) arrested Ajša Ramić from Visoko and Naida Mehanović in the police operation “Tin” on suspicion of human trafficking.
SIPA officers, in cooperation with the Ministries of Internal Affairs of Sarajevo and Zenica-Doboj cantons, searched the residential and commercial premises linked to Ramić and Mehanović.
After the SIPA interrogation was completed, the two were handed over to the Sarajevo Canton Prosecutor’s Office, which opened this case in 2023.
In September 2022, the Center for Investigative Journalism (CIN) released a story about Ramić and Merjem Mirsada Veladžić from Florida who took about 140 thousand dollars from dozens of BiH citizens to obtain U.S. visas.
The business partners claimed they cooperated with the U.S. Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH ) and applied on their behalf for an accelerated visa process. In return, they asked the clients to give them their passports and pay around five thousand US dollars to arrange an interview appointment at the Embassy.
CIN reporters discovered that Veladžić and Ramić neither cooperated nor communicated with Embassy officials. They were providing clients with falsified documents and would return their passports only months later at their insistence.
Members of 14 families with whom the journalists spoke say that cooperation with these women brought them disappointment and shame. Some were very concerned about their documents possibly being misused by Ramić.
Also, after CIN exposed Ajša Ramić’s role in American visa scams, our readers started coming out about the ways this lawyer from Visoko had fooled them earlier with false intermediary services.
Ramić was reported to the police and prosecutor by clients and associates at least five times during the past two years, mostly for fraud. The Sarajevo Canton Prosecutor’s Office twice decided not to initiate an investigation while the Federation Police Administration (FUP) compromised the investigation upon the third report by unlawfully obtaining evidence. Prosecutors are still acting upon other reports.
