Officials Deny Wasteful Spending on Minister’s Luxury Car

The Ministry of Communication and Transportation said that a BIRN BiH report about the purchase of a top-of-the-range car for minister Ismir Jusko was incorrect.

The Ministry of Communication and Transportation said that BIRN BiH’s report that it bought the most expensive Skoda Superb car, the ‘Laurin & Klement’ model, as an official vehicle for minister Ismir Jusko at a cost of 81,000 Bosnian marks (over 41,000 euros), was incorrect.

“It is absolutely not true that this is the most expensive model of Skoda Superb. This can easily be checked at the authorised car dealers, because the most expensive Skoda Superb vehicle costs more than 100,000 Bosnian Marks [over 51,000 euros],” the ministry said in a statement sent to media.

However, the Skoda Superb ‘Laurin & Klement’ is the most expensive version of the vehicle, according to the catalogues available at official Skoda dealers in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Of the three ‘Laurin & Klement’ models, the one with the 2.0 TDI engine and 140 kW, six-gear automatic transmission and four-wheel drive, which was bought by the Ministry of Transportation and Communication, is the most expensive.

In BIRN’s report, the price of extra equipment for the car was mentioned, but the article did not say that all the extra equipment that is available was actually ordered and bought, in which case the price of the Superb model that was purchased would have exceeded 81,000 Bosnian marks (over 41,000 euros).

This however does not change the fact that the ministry purchased the most expensive model of the Skoda Superb.

Staff at the Skoda showroom where the Ministry of Transportation and Communication purchased the car also told BIRN BiH that this model is the most expensive car that Skoda offers in its official showroom.

When asked in the original article why the ministry had purchased such a car, the ministry secretary, Igor Pejic, did not deny that the most expensive model had been bought.

The ministry said in its statement that no package of extra equipment for the car had been requested, and that this could be checked in “the publicly available tender documentation”.

However BIRN BiH did not claim that the ministry requested extra equipment for the car. The article stated clearly what the ministry requested, and what the manufacturer delivered.

According to the Public Procurement Law, institutions are also prohibited from specifying car models and equipment packages.

When the article was written, the tender documentation was not available on the ministry’s website, and was only sent to BIRN BiH after more than three months, during which several requests were made and the related copying costs paid.

The rest of the ministry’s statement does not bring the facts in BIRN BiH’s article into question.

 

This is the statement from the Ministry of Communication and Transportation in its entirety:

It is absolutely not true that this is the most expensive model of Skoda Superb. This can easily be checked at the authorised car dealers, because the most expensive Skoda Superb vehicle costs more than 100,000 Bosnian marks.

The heading and a part of the article contain tendentious and malicious quotes from the manufacturer’s description of the vehicle and not the Ministry’s requests in terms of its purchase.

The Ministry did not request any signatures, let alone the designer’s one, which can be seen by checking the publicly available tender documentation.

If the journalist researched the subject and wanted to inform the public in an objective manner, he could have looked through the webpages of the authorised car dealers in order to find out that all Skoda Superb models above the “Style” package of equipment (the lowest price – 67,570 Bosnian marks) are actually L&K models, i.e. they have “the designer’s signature”.

Minister Ismir Jusko’s basic request was to make savings when purchasing this and all other vehicles, which has been achieved by this purchase without any doubt, considering the fact that the purchased vehicle costs 20,000 Bosnian marks less than the amount to which all ministers at the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, including minister Jusko, are entitled.

The article indicates that “… the removable UNIBAG was not requested in the tender, but it was delivered …”, but it also says, maliciously and tendentiously, that the bag served “for transporting skis or snowboards”, which was unfair and unprofessional, to say the least.

This vehicle was purchased ten years after the purchase of the previous car, namely an Audi A6, which was bought during minister Bozo Ljubic’s term in office. The car cost more than 100,000 Bosnian marks at the time.

Besides that, the purchase of this vehicle was partly financed from the resources collected through the sale of old Ministry vehicles, which were bought in 2007 or before.

The fact related to savings of budgetary resources was portrayed in a negative light in this article with the obvious intention of discrediting minister Ismir Jusko.

Additionally, we would like to remind the public that, although he has the lawful right to have a driver, minister Jusko has not had one since his appointment as the minister, which has made savings to the budget of the Bosnian state institutions amounting to tens of thousands of Bosnian marks.

On several occasions minister Jusko has performed his official duties using his private vehicle. He has come to work with his own car ever since he was appointed as minister.

While understanding journalists’ wish to publish “exclusive” and “scandalous” news, we are convinced that the purchase of a vehicle that costs 20,000 Bosnian marks less than the legally-set limit does not fall into that category of news. It is not fair to maliciously and tendentiously distort and misrepresent minister Ismir Jusko’s resource-efficient attitude towards the Bosnian state budget and present it as non-existent wasteful spending.