While workers wait for salaries: Destruction of Centrotrans-Tranzit and squandering of valuable assets

Piše: Rasim Belko

---

The new year has begun, but in Centrotrans-Tranzit the old problems remain. Workers without salaries, management decapitated, and all accompanied by a hidden attempt at takeover of the company. 

The director is in his notice period, Pašo Kalabušić does not want to face journalists. 

“Please don't, I have resigned. I want to leave here as soon as possible. I've had enough of everything,” Kalabušić told us in the first attempt to arrange a statement.

Nor did the company secretary Almedina Kehić want to speak with us. We tried to contact her, reached the company door, but could not go further. Kehić says the company is not hers and that she has nothing to say. 

But that is the least of the problems. Few workers are in front of the company. They speak even more rarely, but when they do, all the despair they are in is felt. While washing a truck at -9 degrees Celsius, they say they have not received salaries for five months. When asked who is to blame, the workers answer “thieves.” They do not want to say who the thieves are. 

Centrotrans-Tranzit is a company that, along with its construction operations, also owns real estate in an attractive location - almost at the very entrance to the highway. 

Those who would take over this company, burdened with blocked accounts, for small money know this as well. 

The company Index d.o.o Gračanica last year, in joint action with small shareholder Enver Humić, took over just over 50 percent of ownership of Centrotrans-Tranzit. After that, Index informed other shareholders that it intended to publish a takeover offer for the remaining part (the other half) of the shares of this company. 

However, according to data available on the Sarajevo Stock Exchange, Index d.o.o. Gračanica still holds 49.803 percent of ownership. Among the larger owners are City Park d.d. Sarajevo, FE - AL Metali d.o.o Sarajevo. It is clear that the stock exchange takeover did not succeed, so the company Index d.o.o is now trying in another way to get its hands on the real estate and machinery of Centrotrans-Tranzit. Namely, in mid-December, Index sent Centrotrans-Tranzit a Proposal for a financial assistance agreement. In that proposal, it is stated that Index (as the majority owner) is granting a loan to Centrotrans-Tranzit in the amount of 400,000 KM. 

It is also stated that Centrotrans-Tranzit is obliged to repay the loan by December 31 of this year. If it does not do so, Index will charge interest. However, that is not the only requirement. In the Loan Proposal, Index requests that it conclude a pledge agreement - a mortgage on one of the company's properties. 

The calculation is simple: a company in chaos, by taking a loan under these conditions, would sign its own death sentence, and with the signing of the agreement, it would already be known that Index has taken over Centrotrans-Tranzit. Because how can a company whose accounts have been blocked for months, which does not pay salaries, cannot participate in tenders, how can such a company repay a loan of nearly half a million? 

Among the biggest culprits for this situation, according to our sources, is former director Ismet Ahmethodžić, who, according to these sources, collected certain funds in machinery, so for one job he took a tractor and drove it to a private estate. This, allegedly, was not an isolated case. 

Also, in Centrotrans-Tranzit, money obtained from tenders was spent, even though the work had not even started. We also learn that the technical inspection was rented to a company, under the condition that half of the money is charged to the company's account, and half in cash. We all know that in cash operations, fraud is the rule, not the exception.

Judging by the documentation that Patria had access to, the fate of Centrotrans-Tranzit is very uncertain, especially because profit hunters have sniffed out its assets. About thirty thousand square meters, mostly in the Sarajevo neighborhood of Stup, is enough motivation for them to try to trample the remaining workers and the other half of the shareholders, and from a potentially profitable company, following a proven recipe, create a new bankruptcy loser. 

And then, with their political mentors, squander the real estate and build buildings and shopping centers.