Dragan Vrankić, Suspected of Multi-Million Fraud, to Head the BiH Institutions Audit Office

If the new chief auditor of the BiH Institutions Audit Office is Dragan Vrankić from HDZ BiH, it will mean that Dragan Čović and HDZ BiH have taken over yet another of the most important institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, writes the news agency Patria.

Although according to the statute of this Office, its head should be an expert, independent of any political party, who should professionally and at the highest democratic level evaluate the work of state institutions in BiH, everything indicates that the Office will be headed by HDZ's cadre Dragan Vrankić, whose name is linked to numerous financial scandals.

The temporary joint commission of both houses of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH, voting on candidates, gave Vrankić the highest number of points. The chairman of the commission, Vrankić's party colleague Bariša Čolak, along with members Predrag Kožul (HDZ BiH), Jovan Vukovljak (DNS), Darko Babalj (Alliance for Change), and Fahrudin Radončić (SBB), gave Vrankić almost the maximum of 50 points. The average was only spoiled by Damir Bećirović (DF), who scored Vrankić with a one!?

The Žurnal portal reminded that in 2003, the FBiH Financial Police filed a criminal report against 11 individuals, all prominent members of HDZ BiH, accused of enabling financial gains for the company Mondo from Mostar through financial malversations. The company Mondo was founded in 1996 by HDZ BiH itself. The chairman of the company's Management Board was Dragan Čović, and among the members of the Management Board was Dragan Vrankić, who was at the same time the deputy minister of finance of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton.

Vrankić then found himself in the shadow of another HDZ creation for money laundering, the Založba kralja Tomislava from Čapljina. The local HDZ councilors illegally allocated state buildings and private land to the Založba. In the court decision on the establishment of the Založba, Dragan Vrankić is among the founders.

The Založba managed the wholesale market in Tasovčići, and besides that land, according to a report by the former temporary administrator of the Hercegovačka Banka, Toby Robinson, the municipality also transferred the buildings of the Čapljina Tobacco Factory and the Čapljina Cultural Center to the Založba. The illegal seizure of private land would later be paid for by the Čapljina Municipality with citizens' money, but the case was never prosecuted.

The Žurnal portal reminds that under very suspicious circumstances, Vrankić also came into possession of an apartment in Mostar, which was also most likely financed with the money of local taxpayers.

Dragan Vrankić also found himself in a million-dollar affair in the case of the recapitalization of Energopetrol by INA-MOL, when investigators began to suspect him due to the cancellation of Energopetrol's tax debt of 22 million KM.

According to the testimony of Vahid Hećo, the former federal minister of industry, energy, and mining, the process of recapitalizing Energopetrol was covered up with papers on the fly. The main word was led by the then Prime Minister Hadžipašić, while Dragan Vrankić, as finance minister, "ironed out" the financial situation in Energopetrol, Hećo claimed.

The Financial Police also filed other reports where Dragan Vrankić was among the suspects, such as the one for the assignment and lending of heating oil from commodity reserves, but this, as well as the SIPA investigation into the misuse of budget funds for the purchase of business premises in Sarajevo from a private company, during Vrankić's time as state finance minister, was not brought to an end, writes Patria.