Three private companies are extracting money from Kreka Mine

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - Last year, Kreka Mine in Tuzla awarded contracts worth around 950,000 KM to companies Junuzović-Kopex, MHI KOMPANI, and Cayenne company without a tender, according to an analysis by Transparency International.

This amount was paid for the rental of trucks, bulldozers, and other machinery, and the controversial aspect is that no public bidding was conducted for this work. Since there is no legal obligation to announce a tender for procurements up to 6,000 KM without VAT, the mine management divided this large contract into 149 parts and concluded as many direct agreements with these three companies.

From the figures available on the public procurement portal, it can be seen that Kreka Mine concluded 46 direct agreements with the company Junuzović-Kopex for the same thing - the rental of excavators, even though the law prohibits the fragmentation of procurements to avoid announcing tenders. All agreements, except for one, were concluded for a round 6,000 KM, thus this company earned 320,463 KM in a year through direct agreements. This brought the total value of contracts that Junuzović-Kopex received from ZD Kreka Mine in 2018 to around 7.2 million KM.

It should be noted here that the current director of ZD Kreka Mine, Osman Bleković, was once conditionally sentenced to one and a half years in prison precisely for cooperation with Junuzović-Kopex, because he fictitiously reported the working hours of this company's machines. Furthermore, the company Junuzović Kopex is also linked to illegal fuel procurement for RMU Đurđevik, where an indictment has already been filed for giving this company preferential treatment.

From the data on the public procurement portal, it can be seen that machines were also rented from the company MHI KOMPANI, also without a tender, and often on the same day, they concluded two contracts each worth 5,985 KM.

One after another, direct agreements were concluded in this manner, so these three companies rented machinery to the mine throughout the year, and no other company had the right to public bidding for this job. The company Cayenne collected about 337,000 KM through 49 agreements, and the company MHI collected close to 295,000 KM through 54 agreements.

Because of this, Transparency International in BiH has filed a report with the Public Procurement Agency of BiH due to suspicion that the contracting authority deliberately divided the procurements with the aim of avoiding the application of a more transparent procedure. Almost all contracts were concluded at the legal limit of 6,000 KM, where the application of a direct agreement is permitted. Unlawful fragmentation of public procurements is one of the most common forms of abuse of the Public Procurement Law.

The companies Cayenne and MHI operate almost exclusively with Kreka Mine when it comes to public procurement contracts. The company MHI Kompani has collected over 3.8 million KM (without VAT) since 2015, and of that, over 700 thousand through 149 direct agreements with Kreka Mine. Almost every time, it involved the rental of trucks, bulldozers, and other machinery.