About a dozen former politicians and businessmen were sentenced to nearly 53 years in prison for organized crime, tax evasion, money laundering and destruction of business records. The state court of Bosnia gave the leader of the group, a former Minister, 12 years behind bars.
Yerko Lijanovic Ivankovic, a former Minister of agriculture of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, must also pay a fine of 25 thousand euros. His brother Slavko Lijanovic was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, the same sentence of the court of first instance, according to OCCRP.
Another member of the group, ex-Minister of trade of the Bosnian Croat Federation Milorad Bahili Milorad Bahil, was sent to prison for five years and 10 months.
The court found that the group had deprived the budget of about six million euros through tax evasion and the illegal use of government incentives for agriculture, as well as from the sale of stolen government shares.
The brothers were nicknamed “Lijanovici”, which is also the name of their family business, one of the largest meat companies in Bosnia. In addition to the offences for which the party was convicted, Ivankovic-Leanovich had previously been accused of buying votes, which ultimately gave him a Ministerial post from which he was running a Scam with subsidies.
This month Ivankovic-Lijanovic ran for the post of Bosnian Croat member of the presidency of the three countries, but received only 1.42 per cent of votes.
