Kešo: I wish we could have dragged a healthy, adult conscript Edin Forto into the mud of the trenches around besieged Sarajevo

(Patria) - SDA MP in the BiH Parliament Safet Kešo addressed his Facebook page this evening, dedicating an extensive post to the Minister of Transport and Communications of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Edin Forto.

"To my public call to the BiH Prosecutor's Office to get involved and thoroughly investigate the legality of the extremely dubious procedure for awarding and signing the 25.8 million KM Addendum to the Contract for the procurement of equipment for the digitalization of public RTV systems in BiH, which on September 20, 2024, the Minister of Transport and Communications Edin Forto signed with the companies Odašiljači i veze from Zagreb and Nimbus Innovations d.o.o. Banja Luka (which took over Sirius 2010, a company on the American black list), the minister reacted yesterday with a statement.

Forto's platitudes, with which he tried to deny the facts, deserve a response:

1. There is no need for anyone to drag Minister Forto into the 'mud' he speaks of here, because he has long dragged himself into that mud by agreeing to a devil's pact with Milorad Dodik and entering into arrangements with companies from his business empire that the US has blacklisted in order to destroy the most malignant corrupt network in BiH, a network that fuels the most dangerous secessionist policy.

Forto's desire to voluntarily rush into that mud was so strong that no amount of multi-month warnings from numerous media outlets, political circles, experts, and the general public could deter him;

2. On the other hand, I am, thank God, not in any mud! The only mud I have ever been in in my life and into which I had the opportunity to 'drag' anyone (and I admit, many of my comrades, to my and their honor and pride) is the mud of the trenches around besieged Sarajevo, from which my comrades-in-arms and I defended our beloved city from the first to the last day of the aggression against BiH;

3. I wish we could have dragged a healthy, adult conscript Edin Forto into that honorable and sacred mud (since we are talking about mud at Forto's initiative) of the defenders' trenches around Sarajevo from 1992 to 1995!

Unfortunately, we couldn't, because unlike the aforementioned mud he gladly jumped into with Dodik today, no living soul could have dragged him into the mud of the defenders' trenches back then;

4. It is therefore insulting and utterly shameless for a man who, in the midst of war, put his personal interest above the interests of the state, betrayed his hometown and his country, fled and left all 350,000 souls of Sarajevo in a hostile environment, to lecture us today about morality and the obligation to always protect the interests of the state and put them above personal ones!

He is the last person who can give lessons on protecting state interests! Therefore, if he protected state interests in the case of this Contract for the digitalization of public RTV systems as he 'protected' them back then during the war, he will not get away with it;

5. Minister Forto further states that in 30 years of rule (he probably means SDA, and then immediately gets agitated and starts exaggerating) I am 'used to... contracts being concluded exclusively in the interest of ministers, not BiH'.

If that were true, which it absolutely is not, then I certainly would not have insisted in my only term as minister (of Education and Science in the KS Government) for all tenders for school construction that the tender commissions be composed of the best and most expert representatives delegated by various ministries, and not just 'my' ministry.

And I would not have fought and succeeded, under threat from some brokers and groups that I would be sued, for a special conclusion of the KS Assembly to form a 'supervision', i.e., supervision over the supervisory body, whose seriousness and responsibility in supervising the quality of school construction I was not satisfied with.

Does Forto think these are acts and actions 'in the interest of the minister', as he says, or in the interest of the safety of school buildings and our children in them!?

As minister, I ensured safe and solid school buildings for all our schoolchildren through the measures taken, and let him, as minister, ask himself whether we will be protected and safe from all forms of possible abuse in this sensitive area with these contractors for digitalization work.

And can he perhaps tell us with whom the procured equipment will be registered as fixed assets, who will manage it, and who will maintain it? If he is indeed working in the interest of Bosnia and Herzegovina!

As for my request for the Prosecutor's Office to seriously address the numerous suspicious aspects of the tender procedure for digitalization, which clearly caused nervousness and reaction, I still consider it completely justified.

Was it possible, without repeating the tender, to change the structure of the consortium, the status of a consortium member who was not a bidder to the status of consortium leader, i.e., the sole executor of contractual obligations, and how was that company allowed to subsequently obtain additional documentation precisely for the purpose of changing the status of the tender participant after the tender procedures were completed?

For someone, it is obviously not, but it could objectively be a controversial fact that in a very suspicious final phase of the procedure, in any capacity, a newly registered company that took over all rights, obligations, and assets of Sirius 2010, a company on the American black list, appeared, and that this company did not simultaneously take over the 'mortgages', i.e., the blacklisted status and its consequences. And something was signed with them.

Did all the previous warnings from security services and the media that the company to which all the equipment procurement for digitalization has now been awarded through the addendum to the contract is under the influence of Mato Botić, a man who had an operational role in wiretapping for the Croatian SOA, have no significance whatsoever?

Since Dodik and Botić have been playing together in this game from the very beginning, can anyone doubt that part of the citizens' money in this project will reach Dodik's companies from his business empire via Zagreb? Is that also within the scope of protecting state interests, especially if we know that those funds strengthen Dodik as a direct destroyer of this country!?

Months before the tender ended, the media wrote that it was already known who would get this important job. And so it finally happened! And all these post-tender acrobatics and combinations by Forto clearly only serve to ensure that 25.8 million KM of money does not escape the predetermined circle of entities to whom this money was obviously intended from the very start", Kešo stated in his Facebook post.