The company said in a statement that the indictment was politically motivated and rigged, and that no other meat-processing company in Bosnia-Herzegovina had been indicted although they were all operating according to the same rules.
"The indictment applies to all four owners, although only two of them held responsible positions in the company at the time. Nowhere in the world are all shareholders held accountable for a company's operations," the statement said.
The Lijanovici company claims that the entire indictment is based on a statement of one protected witness who it said had produced no valid evidence to corroborate his allegations.
The Bosnian State Prosecutor's Office on Wednesday confirmed that an indictment had been issued against the Croat member of the Bosnian collective presidency, Dragan Covic, the Constitutional Court President, Mato Tadic, and another five people on suspicion of involvement in unlawful business operations in the Lijanovici meat company.
According to a press release Hina received from John McNair, the head of the Prosecution's special department for the prevention of organised crime and corruption, the indictees are Covic, Tadic, four brothers from the Ivankovic-Lijanovic family, who are the owners of the said company, and Zdravko Lucic. All of them are accused of white-collar crime and bribery.
The 14-count indictment alleges that in June 2000, when he was the Bosnian Federation's Finance Minister, Covic made decisions that enabled the Lijanovic company to evade paying special tariffs on food imports. The indictment also reads that Covic, the Lijanovic brothers and Lucic bribed Tadic in 2003 when he was the Constitutional Court President. The prosecution forwarded the indictment to the Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina for confirmation.