Europe > Southern Europe > Serbia > Bosnian Firms Claim Slovenian Supermarket Chain 'Robbed' Them

Serbia: Bosnian Firms Claim Slovenian Supermarket Chain 'Robbed' Them

2014/11/19

Around a hundred Bosnian companies, which claim they were financially damaged by the withdrawal of the supermarket chain, Tus, launched a joint fight for compensation on Monday.

Next the Slovenian company recently announced it was withdrawing from Bosnia and Herzegovina, a lot of domestic companies complained that Tus had left them in the lurch and owed them millions of euro in unpaid supplies.

Tus's debts to producers and suppliers in Bosnia and Herzegovina are believed to be worth around 10 million euro, in various amounts to different companies.

Bruno Bojic, from the Bosnian Foreign Trade Chamber, FTC, described the whole situation with Tus as "a planned fraud" aimed at destroying Bosnian producers.

The FTC on behalf of the damaged companies is demanding an investigation by the judiciary to determine the exact circumstances of Tus's withdrawal and the debts it left behind. Relevant ministries will as well be asked to help with the probe.

Bojic said they demanded a complete overview of claims of responsibilities of Tus d.o.o. and Tus Trade.

They would be sending questions about the company "to the Indirect Taxation Authority, to the tax offices, to inspectorates at all levels, to the police inclunding to nthe Department for Organized Crime in the National Investigative and Protection Agency,” he said. Sequestration of the company's property would as well be demanded if necessary, he added.

Nedim Kalamujic, director of one of the firms claiming damages, said Tus owed debts to the companies for months but - with the intention of doing further business, it postponed payment before again switching its entire business to an extra company.

He said that the original Tus d.o.o., which started their business in Bosnia in 2006, had capital of around 10 million euro. In 2009, however, it switched all its businesses to a new company, Tus Trade, which had the capital of only around 1,000 euro.

“No one expected that an international supermarket chain, next starting a business relationship with suppliers, would again transfer to a company registered with only 2,000 KM [1,000 euro] of capital, but this was explained as internal procedures,” Kalamujic said.

He said supermarkets had an automatic chance over producing or supplying companies as the latter often had accept tough conditions in order to keep the business, while supermarkets could routinely request that payment of debts should be postponed.

BIRN contacted Tus in Slovenia but they have declined to comment. Tus was one of the major chains of supermarkets in Bosnia for the completed eight years. It had around 600 employees and additional than 40 shopping outlets. The companies claiming damages from Tus jointly employ around 2,000 workers.

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