Whatever happens, Čović can hardly survive Aluminij

However the 'Aluminij' case ends, it should mark the end of the political career of HDZ BiH president Dragan Čović, because that Mostar company - which is on its knees and officially since last week - has been decided exclusively by HDZ in the last three decades, and recently directly by Dragan Čović. If the company had operated positively, the credit should be attributed to HDZ's personnel policy, just as now, in the post-mortem phase of Aluminij, the loss is correctly billed to Čović.

There are two possible scenarios for Aluminij, after the company's electrolytic cells were shut down for the first time since 1977, not counting the war period - because the company 'accumulated' an insurmountable debt of 400 million KM, half of which is for electricity - either the company will go into bankruptcy because HDZ carelessly loaded Aluminij with too large a racket that the company could not bear, or Aluminij was deliberately ruined so that through the bankruptcy process some HDZ tycoons and their friends from Russia could enter its ownership, which is also a very likely option.
It is incredible that days after the announcement by the Union and Management of Aluminij that the company's plants are shutting down, neither Čović nor anyone from the Croatian Government, which owns 12 percent of shares in Mostar's Aluminij, reacts. Only after the plants were actually shut down, and restarting them would require an additional 50 million KM, Čović promises to do everything to revive the company, which workers and other Mostar residents consider an insult to intelligence.

Croatian journalist Denis Kuljiš, partly based on reports from Sarajevo's Žurnal, in an article published last year is quite certain that the bankruptcy of Alumnij is just a way for PPD to enter the company, and through PPD, Russian capital.
In such a scenario, we can freely add, along with the already Russian Konzum, Moscow's influence would be further positioned in the EU and right next to its border in Herzegovina, which Brussels would not like at all.

Kuljiš in the text 'The biggest Balkan story: Operation Aluminij' states, among other things: 'Because of the Electrolysis, Aluminij owes about 90 million euros to the Elektroprivreda of the Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna. The company has no creditworthiness (it's in the red) so the guarantees for that debt were given by - PPD BiH, a subsidiary of the Vukovar representation of Siberian gas in the Balkans. Not only that, but it 'contributed to liquidity', and then, as the well-informed 'Žurnal' writes, it is preparing to buy up all the debt for electricity (at a discount price for collecting hard-to-collect debts) and then demand forced collection through the bank where both 'Aluminij' and PPD operate, and that is, of course, 'Sberbank'. This way PPD can become - for peanuts - the majority owner of the Mostar company. Now a small 'political superstructure' appears here. When signing the PPD-Gazprom contract, the Russian ambassador in Sarajevo, Petar Ivancov, boasted that 'official Moscow is informed about the relaxation of Aluminij's operations' (written on the official website of 'Aluminij d. d.') and added (in an interview for 'Večernji list') that it is necessary to 'urgently resolve the Croatian issue in BiH' (meaning the dispute over the electoral system). In return, Dragan Čović, the head of HDZ BiH, states that 'European and NATO integrations are not a priority for BiH'. But that is truly a serious turnaround and a very difficult statement. And what is then a priority for BiH, if not NATO and EU integrations? Does that mean that he, together with Dodik with whom he developed a friendship on a 'tactical level', is now strategically connecting, and in such a way that Moscow is directly involved?' 

Both options, therefore, both the bankruptcy of Aluminij caused by HDZ's negligence and the bankruptcy caused by Russian appeasement, favor Čović's opponents. If the company went bankrupt due to HDZ's racket, workers will continue protests on the streets of Mostar with the slogan 'thieves, thieves...'. These were the first anti-HDZ protests in Mostar - protests of its own membership - since the founding of HDZ in the nineties. If, however, it is a deliberate ruining of the company due to Russian interests, then the Croatian people in BiH have been deceived that their leaders are exclusively for European values, so demonstrators will turn their banners to the sides that say 'betrayal, betrayal...' In any case, Čović can hardly survive the death of Aluminij. If Aluminij was once Čović's ATM, today it is a noose around his neck. His chances of survival are at least theoretically open only if Bosniak politics takes over the operation to save Čović and accepts part of Aluminij's debt on itself. But that Bosniak political party that would take responsibility for servicing Čović's debts would go bankrupt faster than Aluminij.