The Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina filed an indictment against Nedim Uzunović, the director of the company "Bosnalijek", the largest producer of medicines in Bosnia and Herzegovina, for organized crime, money laundering and other crimes, Radio Free Europe (RSE) reported.
Uzunović was also the real owner of offshore companies and director of the "Bosnaliek" representative office in Russia. In addition to him, ten other people and four companies were charged.
The indictment that was published yesterday refers to criminal acts of organized crime, abuse of position or authority, conclusion of a harmful contract and money laundering, which were committed between 2005 and 2016.
According to the collected evidence, the illegal property gain in this case with corrupt criminal acts, as well as the damage caused, amounts to more than 10,8 million convertible marks (more than five million euros), announced the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In the indictment, it is stated that Uzunović, in an organized group with several other persons with whom he is connected by family ties or in another way, for his own benefit, and contrary to the interests of "Bosnaljek", carried out financial transactions through several offshore companies.
Those companies are registered in the British Virgin Islands and the Seychelles, and the transactions were made "for the benefit of company accounts in Latvia, Cyprus and other countries, and for alleged marketing or consulting services that were not performed," the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina stated.
It is suspected that they damaged the pharmaceutical company by 5,5 million euros with numerous corrupt acts
"The first accused Uzunović Nedim, as the actual owner of offshore companies and director of the representative office of Bosnalijek dd in Moscow, with the intention of concealing the real source, nature and origin of the money and illegally injecting it into legal financial flows, paid large sums of money into the accounts he had at his disposal, as well as the accounts of people close to him, which was then used for various purposes, including the purchase of real estate, shares, vehicles and other valuables," announced the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
At the end of 2021, Uzunović spent a month in custody ordered by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina due to suspicion of multimillion-dollar corrupt crimes in the "Bosnalijek" case.
The Prosecutor's Office stated that 24 witnesses and expert experts will be called in this case, and hundreds of evidentiary materials will be attached, including international legal aid documents obtained from the judicial institutions of Latvia, Cyprus, Croatia, and Slovenia. The indictment has been forwarded to the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina for confirmation, according to RSE.
In 2016, the international consortium of journalists-investigators published a part from the so-called Panama Papers, in which Uzunović was also on the list of offshore owners, reminds RSE. He was the representative of "Bosnaljek" in Russia, and he was dismissed by the former director of the company, Edin Arslanagić, due to alleged embezzlement in the amount of three million euros.
"He appears as the owner and director of the company 'Seretta Investments Limited', established in January 2009 in the British Virgin Islands. The company is still active and the owner is a company in BiH called 'Seretta Investing' and the director of that company is Uzunović's wife", said Miranda Patrucić, regional editor of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
At the time, Uzunović told the Fena news agency that the offshore operations were not illegal, and that he was doing everything according to the law. His company, Uzunović said at the time, did not have any business relationship with "Bosnalijek".
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