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Veteran journalist Zoran Kusovac, the channel’s then executive director and head of news, said that UNA was founded on a commitment to “free and independent journalism” and “journalism across borders”.
Kusovac was well regarded in media circles as a former war reporter who had worked with several prominent Western outlets.
Something went wrong, however. On July 31, 2024, UNA ceased broadcasting, “forced”, it said, by sanctions imposed by the United States.
Based on interviews with 20 former UNA employees over a period of four months, this is the story of why.
Promises
A UNA TV test broadcast in Belgrade in December 2021, with Igor Dodik present. Photo courtesy of former UNA TV employees.
At the outset, UNA was envisaged as a regional broadcaster, with studios in Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia and media professionals and celebrities from all three.
With the slogan ‘Watch Without Blinking’, UNA promised “spectacular” music formats, “exciting” reality shows, “reliable” news and documentaries, and “high-end” films, serials, and quiz shows.
“It was conceived as our production company’s crowning achievement,” said Milos Ratkovic, whose Videostroj production firm produced for UNA the gameshow ‘Guess My Age’ and a food show with singer Haris Dzinovic.
Journalists were attracted by the chance of higher wages and the opportunity to work with Kusovac.
“I knew that he had worked at Sky News, that he was a war reporter, and there were no scandals behind him,” one former UNA employee said of Kusovac, on condition of anonymity. “We met, talked, and all in all I liked the idea.”
“The energy was great; it was a great story that we all believed in,” said Edina Secerovic, a former news editor at the channel.
Behind the story stood an investment fund called Foundcenter Investment, owned by a German citizen of Serbian origin called Dejan Jocic.
Jocic was well-known in regional media circles having previously worked as director of Serbia’s Prva TV.
Foundcenter Investment was not alone, however. It needed a local partner, in this case Infinity Media. Based in Banja Luka, the administrative seat of Republika Srpska, Infinity Media is part of a group of companies that for years has been associated with the Dodik family. Igor Dodik holds no formal position in the company, though his father once said he collaborates with Prointer, another company within the wider Infinity Group.
Jocic said Infinity Media was given a minority stake, on condition that UNA’s editorial decision-making would be free and independent.
“This was a precondition for starting the project, and it was confirmed by the local partner and its owner,” according to Jocic.
Infinity Media’s involvement was not publicised, but Kusovac said it was not a secret either.
In an interview for this story, Kusovac said Jocic invited him to join the project in early 2021. Jocic, he said, had told him he had been contacted by Igor Dodik with a request to revamp a Banja Luka television station he had bought, called Alternativna Televizija, ATV.
According to Kusovac, Igor Dodik had told Jocic: “I bought a television station. I can see it’s not working. I’d like you to come with a team and help me make a functioning TV station out of it.”
Jocic analysed the entertainment side of ATV, while Kusovac spent several days at the station looking at the news production. He was not impressed.
“Neither the production nor the news programme was usable,” he said. “The journalists lacked basic professional knowledge, ethical attitude and moral integrity, and they were not ready to take responsibility for their work. Their usability for something that I would do, for the project that Dejan proposed and that we had started to implement together, was zero.”
They decided to make use of the technical equipment and premises to build a new channel, though ATV would continue operating on its own.
Igor Dodik did not respond to any of BIRN’s inquiries.
In a written response, Jocic chose not to explain the evolution of the project, saying: “These are questions for ATV and its management/owner.”
Smokescreen
Igor Dodik. Photo: N1.
Kusovac said he met Igor Dodik in July 2021 to present his and Jocic’s ideas.
“He had the same questions any investor would have,” Kusovac recalled. “None of the questions were of a political nature. He asked, ‘When do you plan to hire people? How many people? When will it start making profit? Which segment will start first?’ And so on.”
Kusovac said he came away with a picture of Igor Dodik as a minority partner without formal decision-making power.
That did not stop prospective new hires from enquiring as to the extent of his involvement.
“He told me – it’s 20 per cent Igor Dodik, 80 per cent Germany,” one former UNA employee said, describing his job interview with Kusovac. “But I already knew from other sources that it was connected.”
Some suspected the ‘German’ involvement was merely a smokescreen.
“I was aware that it was Dodik’s, but it was convenient to justify it to ourselves by saying the Germans had 80 per cent,” said Obrdalj.
Croatian singer Severina Vuckovic, a regional star, told the Croatian newspaper Vecernji List had pulled out of the show she was set to host on UNA. She said she had refused to participate in a project she described as connected to someone “who does not acknowledge that genocide was committed in Srebrenica”.
Milorad Dodik regularly disputes the facts of the Srebrenica massacres, in which Bosnian Serb forces killed some 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in the space of five days in July 1995, and which international courts have classified as genocide.
The involvement of Dodik’s son, however, did not prevent UNA from assembling an impressive team of media professionals with newsroom experience at the likes of Reuters, the Associated Press and Radio Free Europe.
One big reason was the pay and related benefits. “Whoever you talk to who worked at UNA, everyone will tell you – though they may not admit it in public – that they came for the money,” one former employee said on condition of anonymity.
Tensions
Zoran Kusovac. Photo courtesy of Zoran Kusovac.
Significantly, Kusovac said he insisted that the channel’s Bosnia HQ would be in the capital, Sarajevo, despite being told Igor Dodik’s preference was Banja Luka, the main city in Republika Srpska.
“I told Dejan [Jocic] right away: ‘If we do it, Bosnia has to be in Sarajevo’,” said Kusovac. “Dejan said: ‘Of course.’”
A Banja Luka base might have left UNA vulnerable to claims of pro-Serb bias.
Journalists were told they would be able to work freely and professionally.
“I asked her [the editor] if I could say in that show that genocide occurred in Srebrenica, and she said I could,” Obrdalj said, describing his job interview. “Can I cover Dodik’s crime and corruption? You can, she said. Can I get it in writing? You can.”
But UNA had only been on air for a matter of days when tensions surfaced between the Sarajevo HQ and its team of reporters in Banja Luka around how to treat the January 9 Republika Srpska Day, a public holiday in Republika Srpska to mark the wartime founding of the entity but which, according to Bosnia’s Constitutional Court, is unconstitutional because it does not represent all ethnic groups in the entity.
Meanwhile, the Sarajevo studio had still not been built, amid rumours that production would be moved to Banja Luka.
“Nothing was being done there,” said a former employee. “We realised that the Sarajevo studio was never going to happen. As people went to Belgrade, they met with people from Banja Luka who had a whole different narrative.”
Then suddenly, in March 2022, it was announced that Jocic and his investment fund had pulled out and ownership had passed in full to Infinity Media.
The move came just two months after the US imposed sanctions on Milorad Dodik, then the Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, and ATV, saying the broadcaster was “under his control” and accusing Dodik of “corrupt activities and continued threats to the stability and territorial integrity” of Bosnia.
“Dodik acquired ATV to deliberately and expressly further his own agenda, which includes his efforts to denigrate other political figures, burnish his public image, and advance his own personal and political goals,” said the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, OFAC.
At that moment, ATV and UNA had the same co-owner – Infinity Media. And part of the equipment used by UNA was actually ATV’s.
According to Kusovac, immediately after the sanctions were announced on January 5, 2022, Jocic told him that the German investors in his fund wanted to cut all possible ties to ATV as soon as possible.
“I saw that Dejan was under enormous pressure,” Kusovac recalled. “At one point, Dejan came to me and said: ‘Igor will take over everything.’”
“He said: ‘I’m leaving.’ I told him: ‘I’m leaving too.’”
Five other employees of the Sarajevo newsroom also quit, including Secerovic. Another, who asked not to be named, said: “My motive was that I did not want to work for Dodik.”
BIRN, however, can reveal that control of UNA passed to Igor Dodik well before the US announced the sanctions.
Sanctions
Milorad Dodik in October 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE/FEHIM DEMIR.
According to a share purchase agreement obtained by BIRN’s reporter, Jocic sold a 50 per cent stake in the umbrella company UNA World Network to Infinity Media for 50,000 euros in October 2021, months before UNA TV even began broadcasting.
Kusovac said he had no idea.
“None of us [senior management] were informed, you can be sure of that,” he said. “Had the controlling interest been passed to Dodik’s company, I would have left right then, not when I did.”
Asked about his sale of the stake, Jocic cited difficulties in obtaining broadcasting licences.
“That was the moment when we decided to withdraw from the project with the least possible damage and the return of all costs,” he said in his written response. “Unfortunately, that process had started before UNA TV began with ‘experimental broadcasting’. Additionally, there was the fact that without distribution, it made no economic sense anymore. In agreement with all key personnel and employees, we withdrew from the project jointly.”
Jocic sold the rest of his shares in February 2022, after the announcement of US sanctions, for 30,000 euros, leaving Infinity Media as the sole owner.
Many former employees believe the ‘German investors’ never existed. Jocic did not name them or specify how much they invested.
Kusovac said he had no reason to doubt Jocic’s word.
“Various segments of the project were implemented by well-known experts from Germany, Norway, Italy – producers, graphic designers, programmers, and others,” he said. “We held regular meetings, their producers were of the world’s finest quality, and we implemented everything successfully. There was no reason to doubt any of that.”
Infinity Media’s takeover changed everything, however.
Banja Luka became the HQ of UNA’s Bosnia arm, while the Sarajevo operation was downgraded to a bureau. Asked why the construction of a central studio in Sarajevo was abandoned, technical director Dario Trokic said: “Because something can be in Banja Luka for a change.”
A former employee said: “And then, of course, Banja Luka started to impose itself and turning everything upside down.”
In late 2022, the UNA operation in Croatia was closed after failing to obtain a broadcasting licence. The channel continued broadcasting in Serbia and Bosnia, though viewing figures in Bosnia were low and losses mounting.
Some said it was good while it lasted.
“Good salary, good conditions, and we weren’t overloaded with work,” said one former employee. “I travelled, daily allowances were always paid, hotel and everything else was provided. It’s just there was always an uncertainty about how long it would last and what would happen.”
Another said, however: “It turned into another format of ATV. The graphics were perhaps a bit better, the cameras were perhaps a little more modern, but that was it – the news started with the president of the Republika Srpska and the president of Serbia.”
In June 2024, the US expanded its sanctions against Dodik to a string of companies identified as part of a network allegedly providing him and his family with “significant sources of income”.
They included UNA World Network.
On the last day of the following month, UNA TV issued a statement, saying: “After three years of objective and professional reporting and setting standards in broadcasting of modern and entertaining content, due to the sanctions imposed by the US administration, UNA television is forced to cease its operations.”
Some 80 employees in Bosnia lost their jobs.
“None of us expected that we would fall apart, that we would actually shut down,” said one.
The Serbian arm continued broadcasting, albeit having severed ties with UNA World Network.
Kusovac recalled the project as one of high ideals and the best intentions.
“I joined the project with great enthusiasm and with a great desire to make something of it,” he said. “I managed to gather top professionals from three countries and get them to start working, not just together, but jointly, in a short time. If the situation were the same today, I don’t know what I would do differently.”