Stanić failed to fulfill promise: Seven managerial positions in SIPA vacant for over a year

Since the end of 2015, seven managerial positions have been vacant in the State Investigation and Protection Agency, so the positions of head of the Criminal Investigation Department (KIO) and commander of the Special Support Unit remain unfilled, with the highest-ranking officers in organizational units performing these tasks, writes the Patria news agency.

SIPA Director Perica Stanić, upon taking office in November 2015, stated that he planned to fill the vacant positions to bring SIPA to full capacity, but to this day this has not been done, as confirmed to Patria by the Agency.

- For three positions, the filling procedure is in its final stage through the promotion of police officers – SIPA states.

It is known that during the tenure of former SIPA Director Goran Zubac, convicted of negligent performance of duties, a large number of Bosniaks were reassigned to lower positions regardless of their qualifications, and several were forced to leave SIPA, including top professional staff. The position of commander of SIPA's Special Support Unit has been vacant since the appointment of former commander Mirsad Vilić as director of the Directorate for Coordination of Police Bodies of BiH in April 2014.

Zubac then appointed the controversial Jovica Mirosavljević, nicknamed Chetniks, as acting commander of the Special Unit, who, under threat of criminal liability, voluntarily left SIPA after Perica Stanić became director and went to the OSCE mission in Ukraine. Dalibor Milošević was appointed acting commander, who was included in the suspension after a report was filed with the Prosecutor's Office of BiH against 17 SIPA employees. As Stanić claimed, the disrupted national balance would be corrected.

- At all times, attention is paid to the national balance at the level of the entire Agency – SIPA claims.

They do not wish to provide more official information from the Agency, justifying it as internal matters that cannot be made public.

According to data obtained earlier this year by the Patria news agency from SIPA, out of 725 employees, 317 are Bosniaks, 285 Serbs, 117 Croats, and three Others.

There are a total of 48 employees in managerial positions, of which 22 are Serbs, 15 Bosniaks, and 11 Croats. Given the national structure of employees, it is quite evident that national representation was not taken into account in the selection of managers, as according to this, there should be a larger number of Bosniaks in managerial positions than Serbs, which is currently not the case.

Serbs have seven more positions than Bosniaks, and according to the national structure, Bosniaks should have at least one more position, meaning that Bosniaks have been deprived of as many as eight positions within this agency!

VACANT POSITIONS

According to information, seven managerial positions are vacant.

- Position of head of the Criminal Investigation Department
- Position of head of the Operational Support Sector
- Position of head of the Witness Protection Department
- Position of head of the Sarajevo Regional Office
- Position of head of the Tuzla Regional Office
- Position of head of the War Crimes and Crimes against International Humanitarian Law Investigation Sector
- Position of commander of the Special Support Unit

As we unofficially learn, three positions that could soon be filled are the commander of the Special Unit and the positions of heads of the regional offices in Sarajevo and Tuzla.