This post is also available in: Bosnian
On October 8, 2024, a Bulgarian company contacted a US arms firm called Regulus Global with an offer to supply 122,000 tons of Chinese TNT explosives, worth almost a billion dollars.
Regulus owns a 40 per cent stake in a small arms producer in Bosnia and Herzegovina called Pretis, which is majority owned by the government of Bosnia’s Federation entity.
Pretis’ yearly output requires barely one per cent of what the Bulgarian company was offering. Regulus, however, shared the offer with Pretis anyway, raising questions about where the rest of the TNT might have ended up.
BIRN has seen the offer made by Bulgarian Industrial Engineering Company Ltd, BIEC, whose biggest trading partners – according to data from ImportGenius, an international trade analysis platform – are in Ukraine.
It has also seen the end-user certificate that BIEC drafted and sent to Regulus, specifying that the TNT – used in artillery shells, bombs and other explosive devices – would be “only for use” by the Bosnian defence ministry.
Asked about the documents obtained by BIRN, Regulus said that its representative on the supervisory board of Pretis, Akos Laszlo Horvath, “shared” the offer “for informative purposes only to establish TNT market pricing”.
“Regulus is always on the lookout for supply chain capacity that can help it meet the defense needs of its customers in Ukraine and NATO,” the company told BIRN.
“There is regular contact with suppliers and brokers all over the world. This Chinese TNT offer was an unsolicited offer that did not fit Regulus’s needs and it was declined. Regulus does not typically divulge specific details in terms of identifying its supply chain partners or discussing specific transactions. That said, we have checked our records, and Regulus does not to our knowledge have any contracts or purchase orders with Chinese companies.”
But Almira Zulic, who was acting director of Pretis at the time of the offer, told BIRN she refused to sign the end-user certificate, appearing to contradict the Regulus claim that it shared the offer with Pretis simply for “informative purposes”.
Ammunition produced by Pretis. Photo: Unis Group
Pretis produces mainly for US companies, which are generally wary of using Chinese raw materials for weapons.
“It is problematic if you want to export to America, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, if you want to have cooperation with America,” said Berko Zecevic, a military analyst and former missile designer for Pretis.
The government of Bosnia’s Federation entity dismissed Zulic from Pretis in May 2025.
The BIEC offer specified that the TNT would be delivered in installments through the Croatian port of Ploce, starting in February 2025 and running through 2026 and 2027.
But Zecevic said Pretis has annual capacity to use only 1.16 per cent of the 122,000 tons on offer.
Pretis said it had no knowledge of any cooperation with Chinese companies in the past five years, adding that its current business policy precludes collaboration with Chinese firms.
“The current management is not familiar with the offers,” it said, while stressing that it took over management of the company just two-and-a-half months ago, after Zulic’s dismissal.