The battle for SIPA director will be between Ćulum and Radinković

(Patria) - All seven applications received for the selection of the director of the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) of Bosnia and Herzegovina are timely and complete, and these candidates will participate in the further procedure. This information was confirmed by the Independent Board, which held a session on Monday.

The names are still shrouded in secrecy, but all candidates who submitted applications are from the Serb ethnicity.

As Patria unofficially learns, the two most serious candidates for the mandate of SIPA director are the current director Darko Ćulum and the head of the Doboj Police Administration of the RS Ministry of Interior, Slobodan Radinković.

It is precisely from these two names that someone could receive a four-year mandate at the helm of SIPA.

Unofficially, certain structures from Serbia are also involved in lobbying for the SIPA director, given the importance of this police agency in breaking up organized crime and drug trafficking chains, whose members are often Serbian citizens.

A complicating factor for Ćulum is the escape of his deputy Zoran Galić from arrest due to corruption, i.e., the criminal offense of accepting a bribe. In the same operation, two people were arrested, and subsequently a third, while Galić is in neighboring Croatia, whose border he crossed illegally.

Although the operation was planned in secrecy, Galić heard about the plan for his arrest a day earlier and had already announced at SIPA that he would not be at work for some time. Ćulum told several media outlets that Galić announced he was going to Croatia for medical treatment.

In addition to Ćulum and Radinković, applications arrived from five other candidates from several police agencies.

After the necessary checks are completed, the Independent Board will schedule interviews with the candidates and submit a ranked list of five successful candidates to the Minister of Security of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nenad Nešić, who proposes one candidate for SIPA director to the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina.