While financial records for Poduhvati Buducnosti-Injazat Future show that the company holds around 27 million euros worth of assets in Bosnia, it posted losses in 2024 of almost 450,000 euros.
Abu Shaibah is the registered owner of three other companies in Bosnia. Two of them, Senyar and Deema, also posted losses in 2024. The third, named after Abu Shaibah and the owner of the land in Breza, ended 2024 with a profit of more than 100,000 Bosnian marks, or some 50,000 euros.
Abu Shaibah mixes in influential circles.
Injazat Future’s social media profiles are awash with photos of its chairman meeting public officials in Bosnia, including the mayor of Visoko, Mirza Ganic, Bosnia’s ambassador to Kuwait, Nusret Cancar, Zenica-Doboj Canton Prime Minister Nezir Pivic and veteran Bosniak politician Adil Osmanovic.
Ganic met Abu Shaibah in late 2022, weeks before Injazat Future published the video of the land in Dobro, Visoko region, being cleared of trees. Ganic gifted him a painting but did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
Ambassador Cancar said the picture of him with Abu Shaibah in 2024 was taken at a public reception and that he could not choose whom to receive. Pivic, the premier of Zenica-Doboj, one of 10 cantons in Bosnia’s Federation entity, said he only met Abu Shaibah once and had no knowledge of his business dealings.
Osmanovic said he met Abu Shaibah as part of a discussion between several people about investment and export opportunities and that they had no further contact.
In 2017, Abu Shaibah met with Bosnia’s then ambassador to Kuwait, Mehmed Halilovic.
Halilovic told BIRN that, following a request from Kuwait, he had advocated for the adoption of a law that would allow Kuwaiti citizens to buy land and real estate in Bosnia but that he could not recall the details of the meeting with Abu Shaibah.
In 2023, the Injazat Future chairman dipped into his own pockets to finance a new facade for the building of the Majlis of the Islamic Community in Gracanica, near Visoko, and sponsored the Mladost football club from Zupca in Breza.
Last year, Abu Shaiban’s Poduhvati Buducnosti-Injazat Future sponsored the Hadzici Summer sports, culture and entertainment event just outside Sarajevo.
Aladin Abdagic, editor-in-chief of the Centre for Investigative Journalism in Bosnia, CIN, said that in 2019, there were some 1,600 companies founded in Bosnia with capital from the Middle East and active in the real estate market.
Some, CIN found, were behind large, illegal residential developments. Court cases were rare, CIN found, and often ended in meagre fines.
“They exploited weaknesses in the domestic system, ignoring orders to stop the work and to demolish the building,” Abdagic told BIRN.
“The owners of these complexes would get away with a verbal warning from local authorities, and the work would often be stopped only after they had built most of the planned villas.”
This article was produced in collaboration with Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, ARIJ, with the support of Journalismfund Europe.
