Authorities should not be investigating public procurement deals made during the pandemic as the purchases of medical equipment were conducted under extraordinary circumstances, said Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik on Thursday.
Dodik was commenting on allegations that authorities in both of Bosnia’s two semi-autonomous regions, the Federation (FBiH) and Republika Srpska (RS), had violated procedures and overpaid the ordered equipment, particularly ventilators.
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Opposition MPs in Republika Srpska have recently filed criminal complaints against RS authorities after they presented documents to the public which allegedly prove that the entity government grossly overpaid companies in various procurement procedures.
Meanwhile, the FBiH Prime Minister and other officials are being investigated for alleged wrongdoing which resulted in the entity overpaying 100 ventilators from China which prosecutors determined were unfit for COVID-19 treatment.
“Some are trying to fabricate affairs throughout this time of procurements both in the FBiH and in the RS in populistic ways,” Dodik said. “They are trying to find out who is responsible for the extremely difficult conditions in which the teams that were procuring ventilators and equipment had found themselves in.”
“The only address for this (procurement) was China and we could not deal with the big competition. New York at one point asked for a million ventilators, we asked for 100. That tells you how big we are,” he said.
The Bosnian Serb leader said that it will most likely turn out that those involved in the procurement procedures did not violate any rules in either of the two entities.
Dodik commented on the fact that FBiH Prime Minister, Fadil Novalic, was detained and released swiftly in the case in FBiH.
“If anyone wanted to detain the prime minister, he should have not released him after one day but should have pursued this to the very end,” Dodik said, adding that the fact Novalic was immediately released shows that there was not enough data to point to his guilt.
“I am in favour of determining the responsibility of all those involved in embezzlement but they should not be accused of extremely difficult procurement conditions,” he said, cynically targeting the opposition
.“It was easy to sit at home and wait for something to scream about while doing nothing yourself,” he said.
Novalic and everybody else who was working on procurement at the time knows how difficult it was, he added.
Dodik also commented on the EU closing its borders for Bosnian citizens due to a rise of the number of new coronavirus cases in the country.
“The pandemic came to Bosnia and Herzegovina from the EU,” he noted.
“Bosnia and Herzegovina is no different than other EU countries and our citizens don’t deserve such treatment by the EU. It would make sense to set up a system of reciprocity,” he said.
Dodik acknowledged that the EU decision is a “blow to the economy” of Bosnia.
“The catastrophic consequences of the pandemic will reach everybody. Bosnia and Herzegovina does not have a self-defence system in the sense of a strong economy. It will suffer more difficult consequences and this move by the EU is not fair,” he said, expressing a belief that the EU will soon open its borders for Bosnian citizens.
