The Assembly of the City of Banja Luka made a decision to lease 104 locations for the installation of billboards through a direct contract. Out of the mentioned number, 18 locations were given to a company that was founded a few days earlier.
BY: THE RESEARCH TEAM OF THE GERILA PORTAL
Street Bulevar vojvoda Stepa Stepanovića no. 89, Banja Luka. The company MP MEDIA GROUP is registered at this address.
- tekst se nastavlja ispod oglasa-
At the entrance to the building, there is no sign with the name of the company. Speakerphone with display, but we don't see the name of the company there either. The residents we spoke to in front of the entrance say they have never heard of the name. They note that there are mostly residential units in the entrance, that business premises are located on the ground floor of the building and that we should look there. However, we did not even manage to find the headquarters of the company that signed the contract with the City of Banja Luka in a “case of interest to the City”.
There is no publicly available phone number, the domain https://www.mpmediag.com/ for the website was leased on May 4, 2022, but the website does not exist.
Just a day earlier, on May 3, business registers in BiH identified that a new business entity was registered under the mentioned name and activity code 7311, Agency for Promotion (Advertising and Propaganda).
“MP MEDIA GROUP” was registered in the register of business entities in the District Commercial Court in Banja Luka on April 6, but that is not the date when the complete process of registration and obtaining all the necessary documents for the start of the business was completed. On the contrary, it is only the first step, followed by an application to the Tax Administration, the Bureau of Statistics…
However, only 12 days after the official date of registration in the Court, the mayor of Banja Luka made a CONCLUSION confirming the proposal of the Decision on the allocation of public areas for the temporary occupation to the company “MP MEDIA GROUP” Ltd Banja Luka and which he sent to the City Assembly for consideration.
Namely, after the contracts with four companies on the lease of public areas, that is, 104 locations for the installation of billboards in Banja Luka, expired, the city government decided to extend the lease period to one year and that by direct negotiation.
Metromedia, Nova Oprema and Tempo Gradnja were given new lease extension contracts, and 18 locations previously used by the company DL Plakat, owned by Bogoljub Zeljković, Milorad Dodik's cousin, were taken over by the newly founded agency.
For the remaining three agencies, Mayor Draško Stanivuković signed the Conclusion on the allocation of public areas on April 15, that is, three days before he did the same for MP Media Group.
[pdf-embedder url=”https://www.gerila.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/T-31-00-01-Prijedlog-odluke-dodjela-javnih-povrsina-Media-Group.pdf” title=”T-31-00-01 Prijedlog odluke – dodjela javnih povrsina – Media Group”]
The City Administration of Banja Luka confirmed the award of the contract in a brief reply.
“The Assembly of the City of Banja Luka held its 13th session on 28.04 and 11.05.2022 made decisions on the allocation of public areas for temporary occupation, which allocated 42 locations to METROMEDIA, 32 locations to NOVA OPREMA, 12 locations to TEMPO GRADNJA, and 18 locations to MP MEDIA GROUP, that is, a total of 104 locations are allocated to the mentioned facilities, for the purpose of temporary occupancy for the installation of free-standing advertising panels, for example billboards, with an area of 6-12 square meters”, the City Administration states.
They note that it is prescribed that the allocation of public areas for the purpose of the temporary occupation is done by direct agreement in cases of interest to the City when the decision on the allocation is made by the City Assembly.
However, the City Administration did not clearly answer the question of whether it was only about extending the lease on the basis of previous contracts, nor did they provide us with documents and the opinion of the competent department on the basis for selecting companies.
The Mayor of Banja Luka, Draško Stanivuković, has been unavailable to the public for several days, so we asked for an answer from the City Manager Bojan Kresojević, who says that he has no information that the company MP MEDIA GROUP was founded only 12 days before the appointment of the City Assembly session and the giving of a positive opinion by the City administration.
“The approach we followed when assigning billboards at this time, given that it was impossible to carry out a public call, is that the companies that had locations up to that time should have that lease extended, but the information you provided me, I at the moment don't have, so we will be happy to provide you with a complete answer after checking all that information”, said Kresojević for Gerila.
He also referred to the question of how it is possible for this business arrangement to be subsumed under the interest of the City.
“The City Assembly assesses what is a special interest and the City Assembly makes such a decision, so it is determined as the interest of the City. Yes, there was a proposal from the competent department to determine the interest, but the City Assembly determines what the interest is in accordance with the Decision on communal order. Of course, every decision is based on the City Administration's proposal, but I don't see anything controversial”, said Kresojević.
He added that it would not be a problem to submit the requested documentation, as well as all other information, within one day, however, until the conclusion of this text, we have not received the mentioned material.
102 seconds, Grmuša: This is a problematic decision
On the other hand, in the materials for the 13th session along with the Proposals for decisions on the allocation of locations, the document processor, the Department for Communal Affairs, states that since the City of Banja Luka has not defined the final locations for placing billboards, the conditions for issuing a public advertisement have not been met.
“Taking into account the fact that the City generates significant income, from the fee for occupying public space in the amount of 6,789.00 KM and the fee for displaying advertising messages in the amount of 34,320.00 KM, we consider it justified to allocate locations for the installation of billboards through a direct contract for the period until the announcement of the public announcement and at the latest until April 30, 2023”, it was stated in the specific case, for the planned 31st point of the Agenda.
Political conflicts between the parliamentary majority and the mayor and the removal of “more attractive items” from the agenda led to the mentioned session being continued twice, so instead of April 28, it ended only on May 11, when the items on the land lease arrived on the agenda.
Unbelievable, but true – in a session that lasted more than nine and a half hours in total, the councillors processed the four agenda items on the allocation of locations for billboards in less than two minutes, that is, they needed a total of 102 seconds, which is clearly visible even on the video from the mentioned session.
Point 24 on the allocation of locations for the company MP MEDIA GROUP was completed in an incredible 16 seconds, and later received unanimous support.
Banja Luka councillor Milko Grmuša says that he was not a little surprised when he later found out who was assigned the job and how.
“It is very unusual and I would say problematic that one of the most important resources when it comes to the City's income is allocated to a newly established company. It is not clear to me how it was possible, purely administratively and technically, for the company that received today's decision on registration from the Court to manage to employ workers who send mail, write letters and create an offer for such an important matter as the lease of billboards and media space in Banja Luka for the City of Banja Luka to receive their letter, offer, court decision, to assess that it is of interest to the city and to send everything to the parliamentary procedures as soon as possible”, said Grmuša for Gerila.
He adds that this is a topic that needs to be addressed, in order to determine whether there are certain legal problems because, as he says, in summary they really do exist.
“In my opinion, this is not the right way and another one of those arguments that public calls and public regulations in every aspect of the functioning of the city, from employment, to lease of space, that these procedures must be implemented because with such a problematic legacy in recent years and decades, citizens doubt everything and anything, and I think that this city needs a political leadership that will restore trust in a transparent way, so that we can all deal with the numerous challenges that are here and that will burden us in the coming period”, says Grmuša.
He notes that the proposer of the mentioned point, that is the processor, did not provide any information about which legal entities they are, as well as their business rating.
“As for the opinion of the competent departments, we get that, and as for the rest, we don't get a decision on registration, we don't get any due diligence when it comes to companies and other subjects with whom some cooperation needs to be done. I have already said that it needs to be done, however, the answer has always been that it has been done the way it is done for years and that there is no need for a different practice, however, this is proof that there is a need and I personally won't want to raise my hand for anything when I don't have the necessary information, because, after things like this you wonder if you unconsciously sometimes do something that you would never do in your right mind and with all the information”, says Grmuša.
DL Plakat is retiring from the billboard business
He adds that it is particularly worrying that the topic is the locations used by the company DL Plakat.
We remind you that this is a company that Gerila established in 2020 as using a certain number of billboards without permits and vignettes.
This information was later confirmed by the mayor of Banja Luka, Draško Stanivuković, when on January 31, 2021, he showed the results of the so-called Audit team.
“There are 372 billboards in Banja Luka, of which 159 are fake. They do not pay the utility fee, the budget is annually damaged by half a million KM. The billboards are placed 17 meters from the City Hall. Fifty billboards don't seem to belong to anyone!? The budget was damaged by half a million KM. That's where the free textbooks are. Do you know whose cousin is holding a billboard over Eurosplet? Dodik's sister”, said Stanivuković on that occasion.
However, according to Gerila's knowledge, later the City Administration used even these billboards to promote certain content.
“Ads for campaigns launched by the City of Banja Luka, such as Trotoart, appear on DL's network. This all says that, even though they are political opponents, they found some way to come to an agreement”, says Gerila’s source, but adds that the company DL Plakat is withdrawing from business with billboards, and it is very likely that the company will be shut down due to the large obligations that have.
According to business data, at the end of 2021, DL Plakat had more than 101,139 KM in losses above the amount of capital, and liabilities of more than one million KM.
Pupac: We are the singular legal successor of the company “DL PLAKAT”
The director of the agency “MP MEDIA GROUP” Dragana Pupac stated to Gerila that this legal entity was founded in Banja Luka in April 2022, but without specifying the date.
He says that the mentioned entity has submitted a request to the City of Banja Luka for the allocation – transfer of locations from “DL PLAKAT” Ltd to “MP MEDIA GROUP” Ltd
“We appreciate that “MP MEDIA GROUP” Ltd is the singular legal successor of the company “DL PLAKAT” Ltd in terms of the rights to certain locations from the portfolio of the said company, and everything is in accordance with the conditions of the mutual agreement of the same companies”, said Pupac.
However, Milko Grmuša, councillor and lawyer by profession, does not agree with her statement. Calling for a legal successor is controversial when it comes to public areas and the public good.
“Well, it's not, as our people say, ćaćevina (translation: private property), so that it’s done in that way. I do not have insight into the founding act of that company so that I could claim what has been completed in the legal sense, however, if everything is as they claim, there is no imperative legal norm that says in such a situation that a new business entity inherits what is previous radio. That is clear and evident. From that point of view, that argument is not valid”, concluded Grmuša.
Dragana Pupac confirmed that the agency had a certain business cooperation with the City for advertising services, where the City of Banja Luka was a client of this agency, immediately after obtaining the use of locations for billboards, but she emphasizes that there was also a certain cooperation before the registration of this company.
“MP MEDIA GROUP” Ltd Banjaluka is a newly founded business company, and we have a long-standing indirect cooperation with the City of Banjaluka, through related companies, which companies have many years of experience and a respectable business reputation in this branch, and since the beginning of the work of this company, with the City of Banja Luka we also had direct cooperation. Yes, the City of Banja Luka is treated like all other clients and used our services for some of the spring and summer campaigns that were carried out. Of course, such as the services of other providers that have been cooperating with the City for years”, added Pupac.
Pupac did not specify which related companies she is talking about.
Otherwise, according to the available registers, Biljana Janjić, Marko Naprta and Predrag Uzelac are listed as the founders, that is, owners, of the mentioned company.
Naprta and Uzelac are also owners of another company “LED EURO MEDIA”, which also deals with media advertising.
The third partner in the newly founded company, Biljana Janjić, does not have an ownership stake in “LED EURO MEDIA”, nor, according to available information, in other business entities registered in the territory of Republika Srpska, however, according to unofficial information, she is an employee of the Investiciono-razvojna banka branch in Prijedor.
Dragana Pupac confirmed for Gerila that Biljana Janjić is also one of the founders of the mentioned company, but she did not want to comment on the issue of her employment.
“Physical person Biljana Janjić is one of the founders of the company, which is publicly available information, and with regard to the question of her employment, I suggest that you contact the named person regarding the verification of this information, because it is not about questions that concern or are related to business with “MP MEDIA GROUP” Ltd Banjaluka”, Pupac wrote in her reply.
