SIPA has arrested Dragan Šojić and charged him with numerous criminal offences

On April 22, Fokus published an article about Dragan Šojić's “scandals”, including his travels to his wife in Serbia, who fled BiH due to imprisonment for causing a fatal car accident.

Members of the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) have arrested Dragan Šojić, head of the Service for Joint Affairs of BiH Institutions, Jelena Miovčić, a SIPA spokesperson, confirmed to Fokus.ba.

WRITTEN BY: SEMIRA DEGIRMENDŽIć

– Police officers of the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) today arrested one person due to suspicion that he committed criminal offences of abuse of office or authority, embezzlement in the service, and fraud in the service prescribed by the Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The person deprived of liberty was taken to the SIPA premises for criminal processing and interrogation as a suspect. The person was deprived of liberty on the instructions of the acting prosecutor of the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina – said Miovčić.

Fokus recently revealed that members of the State Investigation and Protection Agency entered the Service for Joint Affairs of BiH Institutions, that they seized certain documents, and interrogated certain employees of the Service.

RELATED TEXT: Pod lupom istražitelja putno nalozi, javne nabavke i zapošljavanja u Službi za zajedničke poslove institucija BiH

Irregularities in employment, public procurement and forgery of travel orders were under the scrutiny of investigators at the time.

AT THE EXPENSE OF THE STATE, HE VISITED A REFUGEE WIFE IN SERBIA

Dragan Šojić has been reported to have been travelling to Serbia by official car every Thursday for three years to visit his wife, who, according to Fokus sources, escaped from prison in BiH for participating in a fatal car accident. Unofficially, we learn that he was in Serbia 300 times, and 35 times in Montenegro without a travel order.

RELATED TEXT: Under the magnifying glass of the investigator, travel orders, public procurement and employment in the Service for Joint Affairs of BiH Institutions

According to our sources, Šojić justified his absence from work on Friday with false travel orders issued for destinations in BiH, and travel orders for Šojić should have been written retroactively in recent months, however, to our knowledge, this was thwarted by Vladimir Vukša, head of the Legal Affairs Department, who drew Šojić's attention to the fact that certain decisions regarding these trips were not signed by Dragan Slipac, one of Šojić's deputies.

According to our sources, Vukša's position that all acts of the Service for Joint Affairs of BiH Institutions must be signed by the director and the signatures of his two deputies led to conflicts with some employees who participated in the retroactive introduction of travel orders for Dragan Šojić in the records of the protocol, and according to the claims of our sources, Vukša's signature was even falsified.

In a recent response to Fokus’s inquiries, Dragan Šojić, arrested today, rejected all accusations against him, when it comes to forged travel orders and the use of official cars for private purposes.

When asked earlier by Fokus whether he was visiting a fugitive wife in Serbia with taxpayers’ money, or at the expense of the state, who was hiding from the BiH judiciary where she was supposed to serve her prison sentence, the BiH Office of Common Affairs of Institutions replied that “given that the last two questions are of a private nature, director Dragan Šojić reserves the right not to answer them. ”

“The service has irregularities”

Dragan Slipac, one of the deputy directors of the Service, who openly told Fokus that there are “irregularities in the Service”, confirmed that he noticed irregularities for Fokus when coming to the Service for Joint Affairs of BiH Institutions. Slipac has been in the Service since January 1 this year, and before that he worked in the Agency for Prevention of Corruption and Coordination of the Fight against Corruption in BiH.

EMPLOYMENT AND PUBLIC PROCUREMENT

Slipac confirmed for Fokus that he refuses to give consent to any act in the Service that he considers to be inconsistent with the law.

In its latest report, the Audit Office of the Institutions of BiH also pointed out ambiguities regarding the use of official vehicles and the manner of issuing travel orders in the Service for Joint Affairs of the Institutions of BiH.

– By inspecting the orders for official vehicles, we determined frequent significant daily loco mileage for individual vehicles (90 kilometres and more), as well as much higher mileage for longer distances (Banja Luka, Mostar, Tuzla) without written explanations – state auditors pointed out.

By the way, the Service for Joint Affairs of BiH Institutions constantly employs about 500 people. The annual budget of this institution is about 19 million KM, of which about seven million goes to the salaries of employees.

Fokus.ba published an article on the investigation into the abuse of official position and authority of Dragan Šojić on April 22 this year

The number of employees in this service is constantly growing, so the auditors recorded that in 2020, when the volume of work of this service, especially in the catering services provided by institutions, was significantly reduced, and when many worked from home due to the coronavirus pandemic, in that period, this service employed five civil servants and 21 employees for an indefinite period of time through a public announcement.

As many as 50 people were hired on a temporary basis in 2020, and these contracts were renewed several times after 3 months.

In the last report for this service, the auditors pointed out the weaknesses in the efficiency of public procurement procedures, which is a big problem, because this service for the needs of all state institutions apart from heating oil necessary for heating, procures food, beverages, and hygiene and other necessities.

Earlier this year, the magazine “Žurnal” wrote about Dragan Šojić's suspicious business when they updated the story about Šojić's plan to, outside of the Law on Public Procurement of BiH, buy a part of the building in Istočno Sarajevo for two million KM from the company “Građenje”, for the needs of BiH institutions.