Kvesić's hospital's 10 million KM electricity bill was pardoned, will they do the same for unlawful tenders? 

University clinical hospital (SKB) Mostar, lead by its decades-long director Ante Kvesić, who is (even self admittedly) very close to the leader of HDZ BiH Dragan Čović, according to the investigation of portal Fokus.ba, is spending enormous funds on tenders that are usually won by the same companies. At the same time, the now ex-government of FBiH has provided financial consolidation to this hospital, and in March this year, they made the decision to write off their electricity debt which amounted to an astounding sum of 10 million KM!

“If by the date of arrival, the buyer does not pay the electric energy bill, Elektroprivreda HZHB will send them a warning because of the debt. In case the buyer does not pay that debt after the deadline, the decision is made to stop electrical energy, and then the competent service of EPHZHB goes into realization of that decision.”

These are the actual rules of EPHZHB according to the business policy of this public company which should be valid for all subjects. However, that is not the case with SKB Mostar. First the administration of Elektroprivreda HZHB made the decision on November 10th 2022 to write off 10 million KM of SKB Mostar's debt, and then that decision was confirmed on March 10th by the Federal government. In the decision of the FBiH Government, it's stated that SKB had a full debt of 19,4 million KM?!

Suspicious lossmaker

According to the decision (without any explanation), 10 million KM is written off, while the rest goes into the consolidation procedure, according to the Law on financial consolidation of health institutions that the government adopted last year. This happened even though, according to the aforementioned act, SKB Mostar got the biggest piece of the pie through the consolidation – 60 million KM.

Albeit, we will ignore the mentioned law which, under the leadership of politics, rewards lossmakers and focus on concessions to a lossmaker with suspicious business practices – SKB Mostar, and the 10 million KM electricity debt writeoff.

The government authorized the debt writeoff on March 23rd, which is witnessed by the decision published in the Official gazette. But, six days earlier, they adopted the act with which they informed the shareholders assembly of Elektroprivreda HZHB to take the SKB debt writeoff decision off the daily schedule?! This meeting was supposed to be held on March 28th, but suddenly the representatives of the FBiH Government, as the majority owner of EPHZHB, decided not to show up.

We mailed the management of EPHZHB an official question asking what is the justification for writing off the 10 million KM electricity debt of SKB Mostar, but we didn't get an answer. It should be noted that this is not the first time that EPHZHB, whose leader is HDZ BiH cadre Marinko Gilja, writes off debts to close companies. As found out by federal auditors in 2020, almost 100 million KM of Aluminij's debt was written off, with no authorization by the Supervisory board and knowledge of the 90-percent owner, FBiH Government.

The most favorable suppliers

The FBiH Government's public relations service made sure we got an appropriate answer, as they tried to coordinate with the authorities from the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of energy, industry and mining. However, up until the publishing of this story, there was no response from the ministries.

Just a few days after the Federal government pardoned SKB Mostar's 10 million KM electricity debt, the Procurement Review body overturned the unlawful tender of this Mostar based hospital worth 449.814 KM.

Namely, SKB Mostar chose Melcom Mostar on February 17th as the most favorable supplier for the acquisition of disinfectants, skin and hand washing solutions. Unlawfully, it will turn out in the decision of the Procurement Review body brought on March 31st. In this decision, it is stated that SKB Mostar eliminated other suppliers using the changes of the Law on Public Procurement of BiH, even though these changes were still not in power.

Contrary to actual Laws, they eliminated the company SpektroLab Banja Luka, who later complained. Additionally, as found out by the Procurement Review body, SKB Mostar has unlawfully eliminated SpektroLab because of “pure formalism”.

By the way, the company Melcom from Mostar, according to Fokus's research, won nine tenders by SKB Mostar, only in the period from November 2022 until February this year. Most of them were very lucrative.

In november, they won a tender by the Mostar hospital for specific consumables for the Clinic for urology (111.782 KM), as well as specific material for warming patients (54.468 KM). In December, they got the job for acquisition of medical equipment – anesthesiological devices (388.440 KM), as well as reagents and consumables for the automatic analyser Wadiana (409.470 KM).

In January, they won the tender for the acquisition of nucleic acid extraction kits (488.592 KM), and patient monitors (501.930 KM), and in February they were chosen as the most favorable suppliers for the procurement of disinfectants and hand and skin washing solutions (449.814 KM), as well as solutions for disinfecting and washing instruments (76.602 KM), surfaces and floors (178.477 KM).

Canceled tenders

The sum of all tenders which were won by Melcom in this period is larger than 2,6 million KM (2.659.575 KM). The company Melcom, which was heavily favored over other suppliers, which is visible in the latest Procurement review body's decision, has been doing business with SKB Mostar for years, and has earned millions.

The founder and director of the company is Mate Čujić, which is, according to the words of the SKB Mostar's director Ante Kvesić, his “good friend”.

-I have no connection to the company Melcom, and Mate is my friend. But that means nothing – said Kvesić in an earlier interview for Žurnal.

The director of SKB Mostar has, as stated earlier, become friends with Ivan Kvesić, the founder and director of the company Inel from Mostar. As we investigated, SKB Mostar has, from November 2022 till February 2023, signed seven contracts worth in total 1,3 million KM (1.363.407 KM).

According to info from Public procurement portal, the Procurement Review body has brought several decisions lately related to unlawful tenders of SKB Mostar.

So, on March 24th this year, the Procurement Review body canceled a tender for the servicing and upkeep of official vehicles because of unlawfulness.

According to the decision from November 17th 2022, the tender for the acquisition of the device for hybrid picturing in emission diagnostics was done unlawfully, as well as the tender for the acquisition of the multislice device for Computed Tomography, which the Procurement Review body decided on September 29th 2022.

Tax debt

In addition, while SKB Mostar publishes multimillion-worth tenders on a yearly basis, its tax debt rises year by year. On December 31st 2022, according to official data of the Tax administration office, it was 92.985.972 KM, which puts SKB Mostar at the sixth place of the notorious list of the highest tax debtors in the Federation of BiH.

The FBiH Government's public relations service stated in their answer to Fokus.ba that the debt that was written off to EPHZHB was made earlier than 2013.

-The base causes of insolvency of SKB Mostar, as towards EPHZHB as well as other suppliers, are found in the inadequate model of financing and paying for services, the disproportionality of conducted services and paid services which have gotten the hospital in this state, as well as the non-acceptance of founding rights by the governments (FBiH, HNK, ZHK, SBK and LK) – as stated by SKB Mostar.

As far as the tender is concerned, they state that “all procurements in SKB Mostar are done in accordance with the Law on public procurements”. They add that the publicly available closed contracts are evidence that SKB Mostar does business with a large number of companies from Bosnia and Herzegovina.