RS Oil Privatization a Giveaway?

The privatization of Republika Srpska’s oil industry incurred direct costs to the state of close to a billion KM, while public revenues and investment half that amount, according to a report by Transparency International (TI), an independent corruption watchdog organization.
The costs, according the report drawn from detailed analysis of the privatization, done by the BiH office of TI, amounts to the oil industry of the RS being given as a gift in an operation resembling money laundering. One example cited in the report was a nontransparent transaction in which the buyer, Rusian Nyeftegazinkor, extended extortionate loans to Oil Refinery AD Bosanski Brod and then underestimated the value of the business it was buying and resulting damages to the market capitalization of the enterprise.
TI BiH warned that a half billion Euros is a conservative estimate and the costs to the people of RS may be higher from the privatization. It said the RS and the whole region stand to lose more indirectly with a drop in available jobs; decrease in GDP, salaries and the amount of welfare, less environmental protection and the rise in non-economic costs for the final buyers of privatized parts of the oil industry.
TI’s press release says that the sale of NIRS bears costs that will be shouldered by the RS taxpayers in the years to come.

-- Aladin Abdagic