The railways of Republika Srpska ended the 2021 year with a huge loss. According to the financial reports of this company, in the previous year alone, the loss was a large 17,787,950 KM, while the total debt of this company is almost 307 million KM.
Former workers accuse that a large part of the money in the past years of this company came out through suspicious transactions with other companies, especially those whose owners were related to the employees in ŽRS.
The famous document “RT-131”, which prescribes tariffs for the transportation of goods, also shows us how the money was extracted from the Railways.
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This document, originally adopted by the Government of Republika Srpska in 2001, presents guidelines on how to conclude contracts for transport by rail, calculation of fares, conditions of transport, etc., as a general form that would regulate this area.
Milan Kiković, former executive director of transport affairs at ŽRS, says for Guerrilla that the later handling of this document by the management structures in the Railways is a glaring example of money laundering.
“The theft on the Railways has a legal basis. Commodity tariff RT 131 was adopted in 2001. Therefore, the Government of Republika Srpska adopted the commodity tariff, after the creation of the commodity tariff, after two years, in order to achieve illegal property gain, at that time, the President of the RS Railways Board proposed, and the Board made several decisions on amendments to the tariff“, said Kiković.
According to him, in that way, the conditions of transportation were changed.
“Apart from what was approved by the official tariff, and it is official because it was approved by the Ministry of Trade and Tourism, and then adopted by the Government, the conditions of transport cannot be changed by the Board of Directors, which decided in the Amendments that the General Director can give a discount of up to 10%, at the price determined by the tariff to those users who want it, and the Supervisory Board up to 40%“, explains Kiković.
In this way, according to Gerila’s knowledge, tens of millions of KM have been extracted from the Republika Srpska Railways in the past two decades.
An internal audit identified a number of illegalities
The Department for Internal Audit of the Railways of Republika Srpska also stated that everything was done contrary to the law, however, their report was the subject of obstruction for a long time, that is, it was not sent to the session of the Management Board.
In March 2015, the Chief Internal Auditor Borka Cvijanović sent the Draft Report to the Audit Committee, where she informed them that during the audit of transport revenues generated in 2012, the audit noticed “illegal actions – criminal offense”.
The scope of the audit included transport revenues – receivables from customers greater than 50,000 KM, and the extent of the extensive work is shown by the fact that the audit was conducted from 01.10.2013 until November 1, 2014.
“The original document of the tariff for the transport of goods RT 131 underwent 12 corrections from July 10, 2021, to 2014 (some changes to the tariff were pasted with sheets of paper over the original text, and some were significantly corrected with a ballpoint pen. In addition to the changes made On March 2, 2010, and May 28, 2010, all other corrections do not have the necessary consent or approval of the competent authorities“, it is stated in the mentioned audit report.
As stated, the Audit could not determine whether the mentioned document was published in the Official Gazette and available to all users of transport, which is contrary to the Law on Contracts for Transport in Railway Transport of Republika of Srpska.
It is added that numerous illegalities were also determined during the formation of the price for the transport of bauxite from the company Alumina.
“Formation of bauxite transport prices for the alumina factory “Birač” Zvornik (now Alumina) is done on the basis of the exceptional tariff “IT-8210” of freight railway traffic from 2003. The exceptional tariff “IT-8210” is still applied, which is contrary to Article 9 of the said tariff. Also, the audit could not be convinced that the consent for the extension of the Exceptional Tariff “IT-8210” was obtained from the competent institutions“, adds the internal audit, and adds that based on a random sample identified 11 largest invoices to customers, where a number of illegal stores, the most famous of which are Agit BH, Alumina, Arcelorr Mittal, Global Consulting, SGB…
The auditors found that most of these contracts had signed annexes. Thus, for example, the contract with Agit BH had as many as 32 annexes and seven amendments to the annexes.
The workers in the Railways say that the appearance of the company SGB from Banja Luka, which also had contracts with the Railways of Republika of Srpska, is also interesting.
This freight forwarding company was established in 2002, and its founder is Gordana Trkulja, daughter of Borka Trkulja, who at that time was the president of the Management Board of the Railways of Republika Srpska and later the director of the Public Railway Corporation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
As early as 2003, Gordana Trkulja transferred ownership of the company to Vladimir Vasiljević, the former director of the Serbian Railways, without any compensation, and the SGB was later declared one of the fastest-growing companies.
In a major corruption scandal in Croatia, Vladimir Vasiljević was sentenced to two and a half years for participating in the illegal withdrawal of money from Croatian Railways, through the company AGIT, whose daughter company in BiH, as already mentioned, had as many as 32 annexes to the contract.
They did not want to give us an answer about the contracts with the company SGB from the Railways of Republika Srpska.
“The agreement on commercial conditions of transport, calculation and collection of transport costs for the transport of goods on the Railways of Republika Srpska ad Doboj defines: “The contracting parties consider this contract secret and will not disclose it to third parties in any way.”
In order not to violate the provisions of the contract by submitting the requested information without the consent of a third party, it is necessary to request the consent of the said transport user – SGB d.o.o. Banja Luka and submit it to the Sector for Commercial Affairs of ŽRS“, it is stated in the answer we received from the Railways.
Milan Kiković explains what the scheme with the mentioned Tariff looked like in practice.
“The owner or director of a shipping company comes to you, offers you whether you want to pay 90,000 KM for the monthly transport you pay 100,000 KM for. Of course, the companies are private and the family member's company concludes a contract with the transport user, that is, it is the transport intermediary. It receives a 40% discount from ŽRS, which is voted by the Supervisory Board, that is, the Board of Directors at the proposal of the Management Board, the company charges the user transport, for example, 90 thousand KM, and the Railways pays 60 thousand. So, they have 30,000 left along with all that is organized and planned, and another unfounded way of calculating and collecting revenues from transportation by Rail has contributed to that“, says Kiković.
The auditor was mobbed
On the other hand, the internal audit in the Railways identified some more illegal actions, from, as stated, lending to customers to the detriment of the Company, to numerous embezzlements with consignment notes.
“Inspecting the issued consignment notes for transport of goods, the audit noticed a number of irregularities… The copy of consignment notes does not match the original consignment note, on copies of consignment notes corrections were made with incorrect data, and on copies of consignment notes in field 41, the weight in kg does not correspond to the weight in the list of cars with the loader's specifications… The audit found that the system of internal controls does not work in the field of transport revenues and that it is possible for workers in charge of these tasks to steal company funds through the correction of consignment notes. In order to protect the assets of the Company, we recommend that you initiate the investigation procedure within your competence“, concluded the audit report.
However, instead of praise, the internal auditor in the RS Railways, Borka Cvijanović, became a victim of mobbing shortly after writing the mentioned report, which was also stated by the courts in Republika Srpska.
“According to the judgment of the Basic Court in Doboj from 10.01.2017 it was established that the second defendant Milorad Nedimović (Director of the Internal Audit Department) violated the plaintiff's right to equal treatment by illegally forbidding the plaintiff to attend the meetings of the Internal Audit Department on an unspecified date in early 2016…,” it is stated in the verdict of the Basic Court in Doboj, and those verdicts were later confirmed by the Supreme Court of Republika Srpska.
15 freight cars worth over three million KM disappeared and were written off
In the past period, in addition to unfavourable contracts, the RS Railways also noticed the alienation of property. This transport company was left without numerous real estate in the territory of Republika Srpska, and it sounds incredible that a large number of freight cars have disappeared.
Thus, for example, the Supervisory Board of the company in the Study on the inventory of assets as of 31.12.2013 wrote off 15 freight cars, with a total value of about 3.3 million KM. As stated, these cars are not on the RS railways, nor have they been cashed, so they are shown as a shortcoming in the list of fixed assets of ŽRS.
Two cars were exchanged with the FBiH Railways, and 15 cars were exchanged with the Serbian Railways.
The commission that conducted the census sent telegrams to the STD sections on the ZRS railways to search for cars once again, but they received the answer that the mentioned wagons were not on the ŽRS railways.
Gerila.info
