CRA issue
At a press conference held today in Sarajevo, Nijaz Durakovic, a member of the Main Board of the SDP, reported on the agenda and the outcome of yesterdayąs session of the party Presidency. Durakovic said that, although three items were on the agenda – rotation in the Council of Ministers and the nomination of Zlatko Lagumdzija for the chairman of the CoM, Election Law and the CRA decision to close the tender for the third GSM operator in BiH – the Presidency focused most of their attention on the last issue. Durakovic reminded the journalist of the “shameful and unscrupulous tender process conducted by the High Representative -appointed Jerker Torngren, who sold the license for the third GSM operator for the low 2 million KM.” He added that numerous other Austrian, Turkish and American companies showed interests in participating in the tender. Durakovic stressed, once again, that the 2 million KM was the lowest bid and should not have been accepted, especially since “some experts estimated the value of the license to be over 300 million KM.” He accused Torngren of “stealing Bosniaąs resources” in his “slave-owner and protectorate mentality.” “Even smaller countries then BiH have sold their licenses for more then 300 miore then 300 million DM,” said Durakovic, and stressed that “this dubious tender simply points out at a corruption and a bribery present in the CRA, as well as to its Mafia-like practice.” Asked if the SDP had any concrete evidence of such corruption, Durakovic said that the very fact that the license was sold for 388 million less then it could have been is an indicator that “someone is putting this money in his pocket.”
He also stressed that the Presidency of the SDP agreed yesterday to persist in its insistence that the tender is re-opened and will make this its priority and a main political activity in the coming days. “We will stop being some subservient slaves to everything foreigners propose.”
Durakovic expressed his surprise that “someone like the High Representative Wolfgang Petritsch stands behind Torngren”. “Does that mean that Petritsch supports this shameful tender,” asked Durakovic.