Politics and Private Business: Nearly 20% of Companies Owned by Elected Officials Do Business with the State

Banja Luka, 30. December 2025. year – Institutions at all levels of government in Bosnia and Herzegovina have awarded over 27,000 public procurement contracts to companies that supported political parties with donations in some election cycles from 2018 to the present. The total value of these tenders exceeds one billion convertible marks, most commonly awarded in areas such as alarm system monitoring services, security services, restaurant and catering services, and the organization of educational seminars.

Cross-referencing the asset declarations of politicians submitted to the Central Election Commission and public procurement data shows that 19.8% of elected officials, who declare ownership of private companies in their asset declarations, have conducted business with the state through awarded tenders. This percentage is 36.4% for officials elected in 2022, indicating a systemic conflict of interest problem that deepens during their term. The data available on the “Integrity Watch BiH” platform illustrate the high degree of connection between political parties, their donors, and the institutions managing the distribution of public funds.

One example of a contract that clearly illustrates this practice is the case of the Minister for Human Rights and Refugees of BiH, Sevlid Hurtić, against whom Transparency International in BiH (TIBiH) filed a complaint for conflict of interest because his private company received multimillion-dollar contracts from budget-funded institutions. The Commission for Deciding on Conflicts of Interest determined only two years after the complaint that Minister Hurtić was in a conflict of interest and imposed a sanction, although in the meantime, his company continued to indirectly participate in public procurements through other legal entities.

An analysis of over 930,000 public procurement procedures in recent years conducted by TI BiH shows that companies owned by some elected officials in BiH received 2,450 contracts, while more than two-thirds or 76.9% of all tenders were awarded through direct agreements with suppliers, without the possibility of competition and participation from competitors.

Political parties record the most donations precisely in election years, while companies that received tenders account for about 10% of total donations to parties. This is only a small portion of the funds that parties report, given that previous research by TI BiH has shown that parties largely do not report donations.

What is particularly important to emphasize is that the data on ownership of business entities by politicians are limited to elected officials who submitted asset data to the Central Election Commission and do not include appointed individuals and all companies over which politicians have beneficial ownership, transferring ownership to third parties.

These phenomena are monitored by the “Integrity Watch BiH” platform, which provides a visual and analytical overview of public procurement procedures, searches for donations to political parties, and insight into the asset declarations of elected officials, all of which provide an overview of the mechanisms through which public resources are put at the service of private and party interests.

These findings are just another of many pieces of evidence that in BiH, as an example of a state whose institutions are captured, business success depends solely on connections with political parties and their leaders, who enable their donors – clients – unrestricted access to contracts through the public procurement system.

TI BiH calls on the media, researchers, and citizens to use Integrity Watch BiH as a tool that, by connecting three different data sources: reports from the Public Procurement Agency of BiH, financial reports of political parties, and asset declarations of elected officials, enables the detection of corrupt patterns and connections that have been capturing institutions and undermining the budget of BiH for decades.