Director at Autoceste FBiH has legal problems

(Patria) - Although the Municipal Court in Zenica ordered in August 2018 that the company "Metalurg City Center" hand over to the new owner "Dubrovnik d.o.o." the remaining approximately 8,000 square meters in the huge business center of a similar name "City Center Metalurg" at Školska 10 in Zenica, "Dubrovnik" has not yet taken possession of these properties, which it paid 6.02 million KM for during last year's public sale.

Metalurg City Center is owned by the family of Ivica Ćurić, a former HDZ minister for labor and social affairs in the Government of the Zenica-Doboj Canton, and currently the director for economic and financial affairs at Autoceste Federacije BiH.

Ferid Dervišević, the new owner of City Center Metalurg in an attractive part of Zenica, explains that for eight months he has been unable to take possession of the properties he has duly paid for, even though he regularly receives bank obligations.

"The process of me fully entering the facility is constantly being delayed, and this is causing enormous financial damage to my company," Dervišević told Patria. He is just one of the investors in Bosnia and Herzegovina whose business development is hindered by politics, inefficient judiciary, and poor public administration. The World Bank's Doing Business report recently ranked Bosnia and Herzegovina as the worst-performing country in Europe, while some countries in the region have made significant progress in improving the business climate. For example, Macedonia is ranked 11th, followed by Slovenia at 37th, then Montenegro and Serbia at 42nd and 43rd place respectively, and Croatia at 51st place. Bosnia and Herzegovina is only at 86th place, making it worse positioned than African countries like Kenya, Botswana, or Zambia on this scale.
 
'Suspicious dealings of the HDZ minister'
 
This is not Ćurić's first brush with the law. He has been accused of assaulting inspectors from the Indirect Taxation Authority of BiH. His private company "NBI Ćurić" owes 4.2 million KM to the Tax Administration, which the Administration cannot collect today. However, none of this prevented Ćurić from being supported in 2017 for a four-year term in one of the most profitable public companies in the Federation, for the position of director for economic and financial affairs.

The Federal Police Administration recently received a report against Ćurić on suspicion of fraud involving loans and business premises in City Center Metalurg, which he now refuses to hand over to the new owner. The report to the FUP, spanning over 40 pages, states that Ćurić took a loan from Hypo Leasing in the name of his company NBI ĆURIĆ to purchase construction equipment and to buy and reconstruct City Center Metalurg. Instead of actual investments, Ćurić, according to the report, "laundered" a larger part of that money by buying equipment from his own company CESTING d.o.o. at inflated prices, while simultaneously spending loan money on other things, such as buying an expensive BMW car.

One of the quotes describing how Ćurić spent the borrowed leasing money reads: "As will be seen from the concluded contracts, the equipment supplier in all three cases is the company CESTING d.o.o. Žepče, which is the beneficial owner of Ivica Ćurić, and whose formal founder is his wife Dragica Ćurić, which indicates that Ivica Ćurić, from the very beginning, had the sole motive of obtaining illegal property gain. This could be inferred from the fact that he sold equipment (crane, excavator, and bulldozer), which was already indirectly owned by him through the aforementioned legal entity, to his own company, for which he received money from HETA d.o.o. Therefore, from the perspective of the first accused, the equipment only formally changed ownership, and through such a 'sale', money was obtained from a third party."

HETA, the legal successor of Hypo Alpe Adria Leasing, on March 11, 2013, claimed 22,404,248.35 KM in principal and regular interest from Ćurić, and 6,910,366.95 KM in default interest, totaling 29,314,615.30 KM.

Ćurić's "NBI Ćurić" eventually went bankrupt, and City Center Metalurg went up for public sale. The new buyer of the business complex, Dervišević, explains: "Only on the fourth sale did the Court in Zenica accept my offer of 6.02 million KM for this 15,000 square meter business complex, after Ćurić failed to pay 6.04 million KM, which he had offered in the same public sale. And that was expected. At these sales of City Center Metalurg, two of Ivica Ćurić's daughters appeared, one as the director of Metalurg City Center and the other as the director of Plan Gradnja. The absurdity is that Ćurić took a loan of 20 million KM to invest in that facility, ruined that investment, and then the same person appears to buy the same facility at a significantly lower price."

While the sale process of City Center Metalurg is ongoing, and even now when he refuses to leave the premises, Ćurić regularly collects rent from tenants.

However, it seems that the bank is not the only one left without most of the money Ćurić borrowed. Ćurić also sold business premises in that complex in Zenica to third parties while they were still under mortgage, so some buyers have not yet registered as their owners, even though they have settled their obligations to Ćurić.

The 6.02 million KM that the company "Dubrovnik" paid in the summer of last year for the business complex will be collected by HETA, while other contractors for the Center, to whom Ćurić still owes money, will remain without funds.