Private accountant hired for Sarajevo City budget!

The City Administration of Sarajevo, specifically Mayor Ivo Komšić, recently hired the services of a private accounting firm, reports the BH news agency Patria.

Allegedly, the firm in question is "Sonex", founded in 2009, which deals with accounting, bookkeeping, auditing, and tax consulting. According to official data from the Federal Ministry of Development, Entrepreneurship and Crafts, the firm "Sonex" has only one employee!?

It is already being openly discussed within the City Administration that this constitutes a violation of the law, as no one can find any legal basis for a private company to provide accounting services to a local self-government unit (city) and charge for these services from the budget. It has not been recorded anywhere so far that a budget user has hired a private accounting firm to perform such services for them, as all users, regardless of the level of government, have their own employees who are accountants.

However, we were unable to obtain official confirmation or clarification from the City Administration today, citing Kurban Bayram and it being a non-working day. The Secretary of the City Administration, Elvir Hadžiahmetović, told us that we can get answers to these questions tomorrow through the press service.

- I can't tell you anything about that. Today is Bayram for me - Hadžiahmetović said.

Incidentally, the person who performed accounting and bookkeeping tasks in the City Administration was dismissed from their position because Komšić cited audit recommendations and stated that they could not have employees working under a contract for specific work. In the meantime, a private accountant was hired, and 11 new employees were hired under contracts for specific work.

At a time when the City of Sarajevo is facing closure due to the new Federal Law on Revenue Distribution, which has halted funding from the cantonal budget, and municipalities have long stopped paying 30 percent of their revenues, it is logical to question the policy pursued by the city leaders who are wasting money on private accountants and new employees from an already empty budget.

As we have learned, if new tranches are not paid from the Canton (and the budget there is already significantly in deficit), the payment of salaries to employees of the City Administration and the City Council will be questionable. Furthermore, the City Council is not informed about the decisions of Mayor Komšić and Deputy Mayors Aljoša Čampare and Ranko Čović regarding the hiring of a private accountant, nor about the precise amount of money the City has in its budget.