Čović's political career marked by corruption scandals, what will happen with the "Čaušević" case

Member of the BiH Presidency and President of HDZ BiH Dragan Čović claims that attempts are being made in every way to fabricate charges against him in order to extract political concessions, reports the Bosnian news agency Patria.

The public in Bosnia and Herzegovina was shocked when parts of the statement given to state investigators last year, immediately after his arrest, by the former director of the Indirect Taxation Authority of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kemal Čaušević, were leaked.

Čaušević, it is worth recalling, was arrested and then released in June last year. He, among other things, also blamed Čović for multi-million dollar crime in BiH.

Čović has only now, six months after the publication, called Čaušević's claims a politically fabricated process.

It is indicative why he remained silent until now, and whether he is actually trying, through this story about fabrications, to secure concessions for himself during the negotiation process, and not for other parties as he claims. Or is his goal, rather, to preempt any possible legal proceedings against him with this story.

The President of HDZ BiH, Dragan Čović, was born in 1956 in Mostar, where he lives with his wife Bernardica, with whom he has two daughters. He graduated from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and later earned a doctorate. In addition to the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, he currently teaches at the Faculty of Economics and the Faculty of Philosophy in Mostar.

Before entering politics, he worked for the Mostar-based company Soko, and from 1992 to 1998 he was the general director of this company.

He joined HDZ BiH in 1994.

Čović's business and political career has been consistently marked by corruption scandals and accusations of enormous wealth. Although he has never been sentenced to prison, he has sat in the defendant's seat three times so far. His name is currently also being linked to other scandals in which investigations have not yet been launched.

In 2005, he was accused of accepting a bribe from the Ivanković-Lijanović brothers as the Minister of Finance of the FBiH and helping them avoid nearly 30 million KM in customs duties.

He found himself before the Court of BiH for the second time in 2010, when he was accused of abusing his position as the federal Minister of Finance and misappropriating 7.8 million KM from budget reserves.

The third indictment charged Čović with, together with other members of the Management Board of the Public Enterprise Croatian Post and Telecommunications (HPT), making a decision to transfer a debt of nearly 4.7 million KM, which this company had towards the then non-existent Ministry of Defence – HVO, to three private companies. Through the subsequent collection of debts, these companies became the majority shareholders of Eronet - the most profitable telecommunications part of HPT, and data on these suspicious transactions was also published by the Center for Investigative Journalism in BiH.

The former director of the Indirect Taxation Authority of BiH, Kemal Čaušević, told state investigators that the UIO, at Čović's insistence, bought a building from Soko for two million KM, although the real value of that building was estimated at about 50% less money, where practically more than one million KM went into the private pockets of Čović and his partners.

The media previously reported that well-informed sources in western Herzegovina claim that the HDZ controls all spheres of life there and it is practically impossible to get a job without a nod from this party, i.e., without the approval of its leader.

In 1998, Čović first became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance in the Government of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was elected as a member of the BiH Presidency four years later, but was removed from that position by High Representative Paddy Ashdown in 2005, after the Court of BiH confirmed an indictment against him for abuse of office. He was then banned from holding executive political functions.

He continued his political career by being elected to the position of President of HDZ BiH immediately after leaving the Presidency.

In 2010, he was elected to the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH, but took a delegate seat in the House of Peoples.

At the General Elections in BiH in 2014, he was elected as a member of the BiH Presidency.