While he was silent in Parliament, MP Jakov Galić raised millions of KM for the family business

 Foto: Glas Srpske

While gaining the status of the most inactive MP without any activity on the parliamentary bench, Jakov Galić, a member of the Socialist Party from Zvornik, gained millions of KM that flowed from the public till into the accounts of his family business. In the last year alone, in which this MP did not speak once, the company “6. novembar” managed by his son received 1.4 million KM of loans from the RS RBI. This is the second million-dollar loan granted to the Galić family in the past five years from the Fund for the Development of the Eastern Part of Republika Srpska.

writes: Miljan Kovač

In the meantime, this company has received a record number of public procurement jobs from institutions, public companies and establishments. Last year alone, they were awarded as many as 57 jobs.

Due to the suspicion that there is a conflict of interest an investigation against Jakov Galić was launched on May 18 last year before the Commission for Deciding on Conflict of Interest. Due to the obstruction of the deputies of the ruling coalition, this commission has not met since the middle of last year, so it is increasingly certain that there will be no sanctions for Galić either.

There will be no shortage of income for the family business from public funds.

Public procurement for private interests

For the procurement of flags alone, the Ministry of Defense of BiH paid Galić’s company over 30 thousand KM, without VAT. The public procurement contract was concluded on November 1 last year. For the needs of this ministry, the same company also procured towels.

At the end of July 2021, the University Clinical Center of RS with “6. novembar “, signed a contract on public procurement of green laundry used in the operating room, worth a little more than 390 thousand KM. UKC also signed a contract with the same company for the purchase of blankets and pillows worth approximately 77 thousand KM.

In December last year, the RS Ministry of Internal Affairs awarded this company the job of procuring overalls worth nearly 180 thousand KM (excluding VAT).

The Galić family’s favourite business partner is still “Šume Srpske”. Last year, they signed a contract on public procurement of equipment for the workers of this public company twice. In May, a contract worth over 66 thousand KM was signed, and in November of the same year, another worth more than 100 thousand KM.

Fund for the development of Galić’s business

Since 2017, the Zvornik hotel “Vidikovac” has been operating within the company “6. novembar”.

The opening ceremony of the renovated hotel in July of that year was attended by the then entity president Milorad Dodik, as well as ministers Petar Đokić, Zoran Tegeltija and Predrag Gluhaković.

As it was said at the time, more than 2.5 million KM were invested in the reconstruction and adaptation of this four-star hotel.

Photo: SP

In the same year, in November, Galić’s company “6. novembar” also received a loan from the RS Investment and Development Bank in the amount of two million KM. The loan was disbursed from the Fund for Development of the Eastern Part of RS.

That year was especially lucrative for the Galić family, because in 2017 alone, through the public procurement system, they got a number of jobs with a total value of over one million KM. Most of these jobs are assigned to them through competitive requirements and direct agreements.

At the beginning of 2017, a deal was concluded for the purchase of forestry uniforms for the PC “Šume Srpske” worth 246,708 KM without VAT.

Jakov Galić, at that time was not in the position of MP, for which he was elected in 2018. However, his influence and political connections as a high-ranking official of the Socialist Party, a member of the ruling coalition gathered around Dodik’s SNSD, were inviolable. However, his close associate and party leader Petar Đokić, in a statement for Impulse, states that they have known and cooperated with each other for over twenty years. He says that he does not know whether there is a conflict of interest and leaves that decision to the Commission. However, Đokić also cites a personal example of the balance between politics and private business.

“I have stopped the work of my private company since 2010, when I joined the Government. He acted differently. He got into politics and continued to work as the owner of his company and in that sense I don’t know if it’s a conflict of interest or not. “Let the commission determine, they will decide accordingly, and if we find out that he misused anything, of course we will not support that,” says Đokić.

Photo: SP, Petar Đokić at the opening of the hotel “Vidikovac”

As the founder of the business entity “6. novembar “, Galić’s wife Anđa was formally entered into the registers, while the director is his son Nebojsa.

However, the real owner of the company is Jakov Galić, which is confirmed by previous documents, and in the register of the RS Chamber of Commerce, his name is still listed under “contact person”.

The Law on Conflict of Interest of Bosnia and Herzegovina clearly specifies the incompatibility of the function of “elected official” with the management function in a private company “concluding contracts”, or otherwise operating, with institutions financed from the budget at any level.

Furthermore, Article 8a of the same law specifies that the same applies to close relatives of the elected official.

As Mira Pekić, the president of the Commission for Conflict of Interest, confirmed for us, “lawyers who work at the commission based on financial reports collected data on possible conflicts of interest of officials or their close relatives.”

“We have made a decision to start collecting data in the case of Jakov Galić for a possible conflict of interest. The commission has not yet decided whether there is a conflict of interest, but checks are underway, because due to the non-participation of RS representatives in decision-making in BiH institutions, a commission meeting has not been scheduled since last year”, Pekić told Impuls.

She also told us that the procedures take a very long time, and even when a decision is made, the penalty is under the current law, suspending 10 to 50 per cent of the salary of an elected official for a maximum period of 6 months and calling for his resignation.

Jakov Galić was the director of “Šuma Srpske” until 2013 when he resigned.

Galić, who resigned from the position of acting director of Šuma Srpske in 2013, was suspected in 2014 as part of a group that damaged the Indirect Taxation Authority of BiH, due to suspicion that his family company “6. novembar” avoided paying taxes. Galic’s company made uniforms for the ITA BiH.

As a member of the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH, he is not known to the public for his discussions. He is known for using the opportunity to retire for one day and receive a severance pay of 29,000 KM. Of course, after that, he continued his good parliamentary engagement, for which he collected about 100 thousand KM in just one year, the one in which he never spoke.

Autor: Impuls