Service for Foreigners’ Affairs in cooperation with other BiH institutions carried out a campaign aimed to determine the legality of the purchase of land in our country, in order to detect possible tax fraud and money laundering.
The move was aimed to get information on how many fictitious companies were established for real estate operations.
“We checked around 108 companies that are registered here and owned by foreigners – 71 companies owned by persons from Kuwait, 13 by Libyans, 12 by citizens of UEA, 10 by Syrians and 2 by Qatar citizens,” said Slobodan Ujic, director of the Service for Foreigners’ Affairs.
“We found that there are a lot, a lot of fictitious companies, that even some of the owners have never been in BiH, do not even residence permit and have authorized our citizens to buy properties in Bosnia and Herzegovina on their behalf,” Ujic said, and added:
“We have also found that founding capital for 99 percent of those companies was 2,000 KM (1,000 Euros, which is legal minimum in BiH). Some of those companies have real estates worth 600,000 700,000 KM. That implies there could be criminal offenses of money laundering, tax evasion etc”..
