Earlier this month OLAF investigators were in Bosnia to check claims that illegal trade in sugar of EU origin was going on via this country.
According to accusations based on statements made by senior officials of the Bosnian indirect taxation department that controls the customs administrations of Bosnia's two entities, in the last 18 months, over 300,000 tonnes of sugar was imported in the country, which was twice as much what the country really needed.
This raised doubts among customs officials that the sugar imported to Bosnia was again exported to the EU, namely that no quantities of sugar had been transferred into Bosnia but this was done only fictitiously and fictitious export operations made it possible for those involved in murky dealings to earn the profit from export subsidies.
Besides, the Television of the Bosnian Federation (TV FBIH) reported last Friday that certain humanitarian agencies imported great amounts of sugar in Bosnia-Herzegovina after the war, and that some individuals transferred sugar to Croatia in order to export it in the European Union, and that profit earned in this way seemed to have been used for financing terrorist organisations. According to TV FBIH, members of some relief agencies, organised in a network, transferred sugar to the sugar mill in the eastern Croatian city of Osijek where they repacked sugar supplies and exported them to the European Union over several years immediately after the war ended in Bosnia in 1995.
The chairman of the managing board of the Osijek mill, Zvonimir Krnjakovic, on Saturday refused allegations labelling them as nonsense, and announced legal suit against the television station.
The EU mission in Sarajevo today declined to comment on speculation about the Osijek company's involvement in the sugar smuggling, and only reported that two independent investigations in the matter were under way, one being led by OLAF and the second by the Office of the Bosnian Chief State Prosecutor.