Appointment of SIPA Deputy Director Removed from BiH Council of Ministers Agenda

(Patria) - The session of the BiH Council of Ministers is being held today in Sarajevo, and the item concerning the appointment of the Deputy Director of the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) has been removed from the agenda.

The Deputy Minister of Security of BiH, Ivica Bošnjak, sent a ranking list to the BiH Council of Ministers at the end of May, with Dragan Andrić ranked first. The position of SIPA Deputy Director has been vacant since July 2024, when Zoran Galić fled to neighboring Croatia to avoid arrest and criminal proceedings. He was officially dismissed from his duties in October 2024, at his own request.

The appointment of the SIPA Director, which has been pending since September 2024, has also never been resolved.

Given that the only Bosniak minister at today's session is the Minister for Human Rights and Refugees, Sevlid Hurtić, this appointment was removed from the agenda as per an agreement among ministers of Bosniak ethnicity. Ministers Elmedin Konaković and Zukan Helez are currently out of BiH on official duty.

A story has also emerged in the corridors that efforts are underway to appoint Darko Ćulum to the position of SIPA Director, although no such proposal has been submitted by the Ministry of Security of BiH.

Ćulum's departure from SIPA and his resignation in March of this year, in response to the call of Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik to move to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Republika Srpska, eliminated him as a candidate who could lead SIPA again.

An additional problem is that the BiH Council of Ministers has not dismissed Ćulum, meaning that, legally speaking, he is still considered the Director of SIPA. His term expired in July 2024.

However, SNSD, through Ćulum, still wants to control the processes within this police agency, which the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Republika Srpska opposed when they attempted to execute a BiH Court order and serve Dodik with an arrest warrant for failing to respond to summons from the BiH Prosecutor's Office, which suspects him of attacking the constitutional order.

Ćulum authorized three individuals to lead SIPA, but they do not have the authority that the director and deputy director have by law.