Od tada, suđenje u Sarajevu poništilo je samo jednu privatizaciju u decembru. Mjesec dana ranije, sud u entitetu Republika Srpska otkazao je prodaju kompanije bezalkoholnih pića Fruktona a kupca i njegove saradnike poslao u zatvor.

To su samo dvije od približno 2.000 firmi u Bosni koje su prodate privatnim ulagačima. Sindikati kažu da su desetine hiljada Bosanaca ostali bez posla zbog vještačkih privatizacija koje su isplanirali “banditi” toliko omraženi kod tuzlanskih radnika. Ali vlasti mogu sada napokon da se ozbiljno pozabave da ih se oslobode.

Šesnaestog februara bivši minister energije u Federaciji BiH - drugi etnički definisan politički entitet u zemlji – trebao je svjedočiti na sudu o djelimičnoj privatizaciji naftne kompanije Energopetrol 2006. Jedan od optuženih je Nedžad Branković, bivši premijer Federacije koji je, zajedno sa još osam drugih, optužen da je prouzročio gubitak entitetu od 16 miliona eura (18,1 miliona dolara).

Sud u Sarajevu potvrdio je optužnicu prošlog marta, mjesec dana nakon zahtjeva prosvjednika da se revidiraju “kriminalne privatizacije”, počev sa nekad uspješnom industrijom u Tuzli. U aprilu je vlada Federacije uspostavila agenciju za reviziju privatizacija, i mada revizori nisu bili angažovani do decembra, oni očekuju da će prvi izvještaj podnijeti tužiteljima u proljeće.

Jugoslavija je započela privatizaciju 1990. omogućivši uposlenicima da kupe dionice u kompanijama za koje su radili, ali tokom rata 1992-95. bosanske vlasti vratile su te firme u državno vlasništvo. U vrijeme Jugoslavije direktore kompanija imenovali su radnici, kaže Ismet Bajramović iz Saveza nezavisnih sindikata Bosne i Hercegovine, dok sada direktore postavljaju političari odgovorni samo svojim strankama. Kako je Transparency International napisao u izvještaju 2009, djelimična re-nacionalizacija “otvorila je vrata nekontrolisanom uništenju kompanija”.

“Opšti stav” bio je da su mnoge kompanije opustošene namjerno, stoji u izvještaju Transparency International, sa menadžerima koji su spustili vrijednost firme kako bi oni i njihovi saveznici mogli kupiti jeftino a onda prodati.

U Federaciji, sa 2,3 miliona stanovnika, 150.000 ljudi su ostali bez posla zbog “loše privatizacije”, tvrdi Bajramović. Kad su državne kompanije privatizovane, većina post-socijalističkih zemalja prošle su fazu gubitka velikog broja radnih mjesta ali brzog bogaćenja nekolicine, dok je Bosna krenula sa čak gore pozicije nego većina poslije tri godine ubilačkog konflikta koji je zemlju koštao 100.000 života i podijelio je na dva autonomna entiteta. Poslije rata, Evropska unija i međunarodni zajmodavci uslovili su finansijsku pomoć privatizacijom.

Čak se i pristalice slobodnog tržišta slažu da je bosanska prodaja državnih firmi veoma loše sprovedena. Moralo je doći do privatizacije jer “postojanje javnih kompanija i državnog monopola čine nemogućim tržišnu ekonomiju”, rekao je Milenko Čolak, član uprave Sindikata uposlenika u Federaciji. Ali u slučaju Bosne, potvrdio je, “profit koji je trebao otići građanima otišao je vladi i političkim elitama smještenim na direktorskim pozicijama i u upravnim odborima kompanija”.

U izvještaju iz 2009. Transparency International je kritikovao ulogu vlade kao vlasnika kompanija, kazavši da je “dalje uplitanje države u upravljenje kompanijama gore od ikakve privatizacije.”

Evo kako danas Ivana Korajlić iz Transparency International, BiH, u Banjaluci kvalificira tu izjavu. Privatizacija može pomoći nefunkcionalnim državnim kompanijama da ozdrave, napisala je u jednom e-mailu, ali samo ako “se provodi sistematski, transparentno i držeći se adekvatnih procedura i odredbi.”

Ali to se do danas nije desilo u Bosni, nastavila je Korajlić; prije izgleda da su vlasti zaboravile na potrebu za transparentnošću. “U nekim slučajevima, nepoznata je struktura vlasništva kupca”, napisala je.

Since then, a trial in Sarajevo saw one privatization deal annulled in December. A month earlier, a court in the country’s Republika Srpska entity canceled the sell-off of a soft-drink company called Fruktona

and sent the buyer and his associates to prison.

Those are just two firms of the approximately 2,000 in Bosnia that have been sold to private investors. Unions say tens of thousands of Bosnians have lost their jobs because of bogus privatizations engineered by the “bandits” so hated by the Tuzla workers. But authorities may now finally be getting serious about rooting them out.

On 16 February a former energy minister of the Bosniak-Croat Federation – the country’s other ethnically defined political entity – is due to testify in court about the 2006 partial privatization of oil company Energopetrol. One of the defendants is Nedzad Brankovic, a former Federation prime minister who, along with eight others, is accused of causing a 16 million euro ($18.1 million) loss to the entity.

A Sarajevo court confirmed the charges last March, a month after protesters demanded a review of “criminal privatizations,” beginning with some of Tuzla’s once-prospering industries. In April the Federation government set up an agency to review privatizations, and although auditors were not hired until December, they expect to deliver their first report to prosecutors in the spring.

Yugoslavia began privatization in 1990 by allowing employees to buy shares in the companies for which they worked, but during the 1992-95 war Bosnian authorities brought those firms back into state ownership. In Yugoslav times, company managers were appointed by the workers, said Ismet Bajramovic of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but now managers were named by politicians responsible only to their parties. As Transparency International wrote in a 2009 report (pdf), the partial re-nationalization “opened the door to an uncontrolled destruction of the companies.”

The “general view” was that many companies were gutted on purpose, TI said, with managers bringing a firm’s value down so they or their associates could buy it cheaply then sell off its assets.

In the Federation, with a population of 2.3 million, 150,000 people have lost their jobs because of “bad privatizations,” Bajramovic claims.

Most post-socialist countries went through a phase of job losses for many and instant wealth for a few as state companies were privatized, but Bosnia began from an even worse position than most after three years of internecine conflict that cost 100,000 lives and split the country into two autonomous entities. After the war, the European Union and international lenders made financial aid conditional on privatization.

Even free marketeers agree that Bosnia’s sale of state businesses has been deeply flawed. Privatization had to happen because “the existence of public companies and state monopolies makes a market economy impossible,” said Milenko

Colak

, a board member of the Employers Union in the Federation. But in Bosnia’s case, he acknowledged, “the profit which should have gone to the citizens instead went to the government and to political elites placed in managing positions and in company boards.”

In its 2009 report, Transparency International castigated the government’s role as a business owner, saying that “the state’s further involvement in managing business is worse than any kind of privatization.”

Today, however, Ivana

Korajlic

of TI Bosnia and Herzegovina in Banja Luka qualifies that statement. Privatization may help dysfunctional state companies get healthy, she wrote in an e-mail, but only if “it’s carried out systematically, adhering to adequate procedures and rules, and transparently.”

That has not happened to date in Bosnia,

Korajlic

continued; rather, authorities have seemed oblivious to the need for transparency. “In some cases, even the buyer’s ownership structure was unknown,” she wrote.

NAFTA I GLINICA

Poznat je slučaj skrivenog vlasništva koje se odnosi na privatizaciju naftne i plinske industrije u Republici Srpskoj. Rafinerije u susjednim gradovima, Bosanski Brod i Modriča, kao i lanac benzinskih stanica, prodani su 2007. – ne putem tendera nego izabranom kupcu, uz zakonom definisane uslove za dogovor koji je stupio na snagu mjesec dana kasnije.

Ruska državna naftna kompanija Zaribezhneft kupila je 40 posto dionica, ali je ostatak prodat nepoznatim licima, što dovodi “u sumnju da su neki vlasnici, ustvari, politički lideri iz RS ili neko povezan s njima”, izjavila je Korajlić.

Izvještaj Transparency International iz 2009. računa da je prodaja postrojenja u Bosanskom Brodu koštala vladu Repbblike Srpske 549 miliona konvertibilnih maraka (320 miliona dolara).

“Afera Birač” otkrila je da je nekad ponosna kompanija propala u drukčijem scenariju. U vrijeme Jugoslavije, rafinerija glinice Birač iz Zvornika bila je najveći izvoznik u zemlji, sa zaradom od 312 miliona dolara od izvoza 1989. Godine 1991. firma je imala 2.600 zaposlenih. Deceniju kasnije Birač je preuzela UkioBankas iz Litvanije za tri miliona eura u prodaji koju je banka kontroverzno pripremila sama, kao konsultant.

Ukio nije ispunila obećanje da će investirati 25 miliona eura u kompaniju i zadržati radnike, u međuvremenu, milioni eura iz budžeta Republike Srpske otišli su da bi se pokrili stari dugovi Birača i novi koje je ostavila lokalna banka u vlasništvu Ukia. Godine 2013. Ukio je bankrotirala, prisilivši entitet da preuzme Birač, sada samo sa 1.000 radnika i ogromnim obavezama. Procjenjuje se da je Ukio uzela 400 miliona od 500 miliona eura iz Bosne prije nego što je banka propala.

Ured specijalnog tužitelja u Banjaluci potvrdio je da istražuje nekoliko litvanskih građana u vezi ugovora o Biraču; da li će optužbe biti podnesene zavisi od saradnje Vilnjusa. Ruske vlasti su prošle godine odbacile zahtjev Litvanije za izručenje bivšeg većinskog vlasnika Ukia da se suoči sa optužbama za pronevjeru.

Priča o prodaji Birača, što je dovelo do gubitka ogromnog broja radnih mjesta i priliva novca u nepoznate ruke, predstavlja ono što Korajlić naziva “normalnim scenarijem” za bosansku privatizaciju, često uključujući “ugovore koji oštećuju državu i bez posljedica za kupce što ne ispunjavaju obaveze”.

Međutim, i sama bosanska javnost je često ubjeđivana da podrži štetne privatizacije. U slučaju Birač, sindikat je podržao preuzimanje Ukia. Očit primjer iz Federacije BiH je farmaceutska kompanija Bosnalijek.

U januaru je dnevni list Oslobođenje imenovao nekoliko ljudi za koje je rečeno da su pod istragom u vezi sa udjelom investicijske firme Haden sa sjedištem u Luksemburgu u kupovini Bosnalijeka. (Tužilaštvo u Sarajevu potvrdilo je da radi na slučajevima privatizacije ali je odbilo da objasni detaljnije.) Neki od navodnih osumnjičenika bili su u od 2010. u vrhu priče o privatizaciji Bosnalijeka, kad je američka kompanija Alvogen dala ponudu.

Uprava Bosnalijeka je odvratila kampanjom protiv Alvogena, objavljujući oglase u cilju diskreditovanja njihovih “sumnjivih investicionih planova”. Priča o sumnjivim američkim namjerama pročula se širom regiona putem najvećeg lista u Bosni Dnevni avaz. Alvogen je investirao svuda, dok je Haden kupio 30 posto Bosnalijeka 2012-13 – za trećinu cijene manje od ponude Alvogena.

OIL AND ALUMINA

A notorious case of hidden ownership concerns the privatization of Republika Srpska’s oil and gas industry. Refineries in the neighboring towns of Bosanski Brod and Modrica, as well as a chain of filling stations, were sold in 2007 – not by tender but to a chosen buyer, with the law defining conditions for the deal coming into force a month later.

The Russian state-owned oil company Zarubezhneft bought 40 percent of the shares, but the rest were sold to unknown persons, leading to “suspicions that some of the owners are, in fact, political leaders from RS, or someone connected with them,” Korajlic said.

TI’s 2009 report reckons that the sale of the Bosanski Brod plant cost the Republika Srpska government 549 million convertible marks ($320 million).

The “Birac affair” saw a once-proud company brought low in a different scenario. In Yugoslav times, the Birac ad Zvornik alumina refinery was the country’s largest exporter, earning $312 million abroad in 1989. In 1991 the firm had 2,600 employees. A decade later Birac was taken over by Lithuania’s Ukio Bankas for 3 million euros in a sale the bank had controversially prepared itself, as a consultant.

Ukio failed to honor pledges to invest 25 million euros in the company and retain workers; meanwhile, Republika Srpska’s budget was tapped for millions of euros to cover Birac’s old debts and new ones run up by a Ukio-owned local bank. In 2013, Ukio went bankrupt, forcing the entity to take over Birac, now with only 1,000 workers and huge liabilities. A widely cited estimate is that Ukio took 400 million to 500 million euros out of Bosnia before the bank collapsed.

The Special Prosecutor’s Office in Banja Luka confirmed it is investigating several Lithuanian citizens in connection with the Birac deal; whether charges will be filed depends on cooperation by Vilnius. Russian authorities last year rejected Lithuania’s request for the extradition of Ukio’s former majority owner to face embezzlement charges.

The story of

Birac’s sale, leading to huge job losses and money flowing into unknown hands, embodies what TI’s Korajlic

calls “the normal scenario” for Bosnian privatizations, often including “contracts that damage the state, and no consequences to the buyers from not fulfilling their obligations.”

The Bosnian public itself, however, has often been persuaded to support damaging privatizations. In the

Birac

case, trade unions backed Ukio’s takeover. A telling example from the Bosniak-Croat Federation is that of the pharmaceutical maker Bosnalijek.

In January, the newspaper Oslobodjenje named several people it said were under investigation in connection with the Luxembourg-based investment firm Haden’s share purchases in Bosnalijek. (The Prosecutor’s Office in Sarajevo confirmed that it was working on privatization cases but declined to elaborate.) Some of the alleged suspects have been central to Bosnalijek’s privatization story since 2010, when the American company Alvogen launched a takeover bid.

Bosnalijek management hit back with a campaign against Alvogen, placing ads aimed at discrediting its “suspicious investment plans.” A story about the Americans’ dubious intentions spread across the region via Bosnia’s largest paper, Dnevni Avaz. Alvogen invested elsewhere, while Haden bought 30 percent of Bosnalijek in 2012-13 – at a price one-third lower than Alvogen’s offer.

‘POTEZ OČAJNIKA’

Godine 2012. Parlament federacije BiH glasao je za reviziju cijelog procesa privatizacije, ali uz slab efekat. Ali kad su Bosanci prošle godine izašli na ulice, zahtijevajući ne samo radna mjesta nego i odgovornost za političare koji su se ogrebali privatizacijom, lideri entiteta su odgovorili: vlada je izdala listu od nekoliko desetina velikih “sumnjivih privatizacija”.

Kako su žrtve loše privatizacije preplavile vladu sa žalbama, federalni premijer Nermin Nikšić je izjavio da su zvaničnici “isto tako frustrirani činjenicom da tražimo (akciju) i istaknemo (sumnjive privatizacije) ali u sudstvu se ništa ne dešava”.

Admir Arnautović, glasnogovornik Tužilaštu u Tuzli, izjavio je da nije u pitanju volja suda nego politička volja, karakterišući komentare poput Nikšićevog kao “potez očajnika” pred socijalnim nemirima.

Ako je neka privatizacija izvršena nelegalno, rekao je Arnautović – “a kako stvari izgledaju u Bosni, vjerovatno jeste” – tužioci mogu djelovati samo kad dobiju dokaz agencije za provedbu zakona. “U uredu tužioca u Tuzli nismo primili ništa slično”, rekao je.

Glasnogovornik je naveo jedan drugi sličan znak rijetke političke volje u takvim slučajevima: revizorska agencija za privatizaciju u Federaciji je do nedevano imala samo jednog zaposlenog.

U Republici Srpskoj, sličan process revizije privatizacije prije nekoliko godina nije donio rezultat, izjavila je Korajlić. Ona se nada da će ovog puta u Federaciji stvari biti drukčije.

Čak i kad stavimo nastranu bezbroj skandala, rekord privatizacije u Bosni je mračan, jer je većina od 2.000 prodatih firmi pred gašenjem. Ipak, agencija za privatizaciju u Federaciji planira da proda 14 velikih javnih kompanija 2015. Ovo je najvaljeno prošlog decembra dok su radnici iz Tuzle pogođeni privatizacijom marširali prema Evropskoj uniji.

Vratili su se – autobusom – prihvativši nadoknadu od 200 eura po glavi da se vrate kući.

Sedmog februara ljudi su obilježili godišnjicu prošlogodišnje pobune u gradovima širom Bosne, ovaj put mirno i to u stotinama a ne u hiljadama, neki noseći plakate rugajući se “moćnicima”. Aktivisti iz Tuzle tvrde da ništa nije isto od prošlogodišnjih nemira. Postoji promjena na političkom planu – nakon mjeseci političkog zastoja poslije oktobarskih izbora, nova administracija na entitetskom i državnom nivou se profilira. Ali malo je u Bosni onih koji dijele optimizam podstrekača iz Tuzle.

‘AN ACT OF DESPAIR’

In 2012, the Bosniak-Croat Federation parliament voted to revise the entire privatization process, to little effect. But after Bosnians took to the streets last year, demanding not only jobs but accountability for politicians who greased the skids of privatization, the entity’s leaders responded: the government issued a list of several dozen large “suspect privatizations.”

As victims of bad privatizations flooded the government with complaints, Federation Prime Minister Nermin Niksic said officials were “just as frustrated with the fact that we demand [action] and highlight [suspicious privatizations] but in the judiciary, nothing happens.”

Admir

Arnautovic, spokesman for the Prosecutor’s Office in Tuzla, said the issue was not judicial will but political will, characterizing comments like Niksic’s as “an act of despair” in the face of social unrest.

If some privatization was carried out illegally, Arnautovic said – “and given the way things look in Bosnia, it probably was” – prosecutors can act only on evidence supplied by a law enforcement agency. “In the Tuzla Prosecutor’s Office, we’ve received nothing of the kind,” he said.

The spokesman cited another seeming sign of scant political will to take on such cases: the Federation’s privatization review agency until recently had just one employee.

In Republika Srpska, a similar revision of the privatization process several years ago brought little real action, TI’s

Korajlic

said. She hopes things will be different this time in the Federation.

Even setting aside the myriad scandals, Bosnia’s privatization record is grim, with most of the 2,000 firms sold off eventually closing. Nevertheless, the Federation’s privatization agency is planning to sell 14 large public companies in 2015. The announcement was made in late December while privatization-hit Tuzla workers were marching into the European Union.

They have since returned – by bus – accepting a government grant of 200 euros per person to come home.

On 7 February, people marked the anniversary of last year’s riots in towns across Bosnia, this time quietly and in their hundreds rather than thousands, some carrying placards mocking “the oligarchs.” Activists from Tuzla contend that nothing is the same since last year’s unrest. There is change on the political front – after months of political stasis following October’s elections, new entity and national-level administrations are taking shape. But few in Bosnia share the Tuzla firebrands’ optimism.