Bosnia arrests two ministers over tax fraud

Bosnian police on Wednesday arrested 11 people including two regional ministers over multi-million-euro tax fraud that authorities call one of the most “complex organised criminal cases” in the nation’s history.

“Eleven people were arrested while three more suspects are still being questioned,” police spokeswoman Kristina Jozic told journalists.

Among those detained were Vice Prime Minister Jerko Ivankovic Lijanovic and Commerce Minister Milorad Bahilj of the Muslim-Croat Federation, one Bosnia’s two semi-autonomous halves, a state prosecutor’s office statement said. Lijanovic is also agriculture minister.

The two are suspected of organised crime, tax evasion and money laundering, the police spokeswoman said.

“A probe established that they have embezzled more than 11.6 million convertible marks (six million euros, $7.8 million),” she added.

The prosecutor’s office claimed the pair founded, then liquidated, fictitious firms, funnelling off money and leaving a huge tax debt each time.

It labelled the affair “one of the most complex organised crime cases” since the breakup of Yugoslavia in bloody ethnic wars in the 1990s.

Ivankovic Lijanovic, his brother Mladen — who was also detained — and other family members run an important meat factory in the southern town of Siroki Brijeg.

Bosnia is considered one of the Balkan countries most blighted by corruption. However, local politicians and civil servants are rarely brought to justice.

Since the 1992-1995 war, Bosnia consists of two semi-independent entities — the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serbs’ Republika Srpska. Each has its own government.