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Digital Power Investigation
Guest
The contract came first. Independent oversight was still a thought.
By the time Dražen Višnjić publicly explained the technology project, Republika Srpska’s government had already signed an agreement worth BAM 57 million with the Chinese company ELINC. The proposed combination was explicit: Chinese hardware and software, Russian organizational practices, and Israeli training.
Asked who would independently guard against abuse, Višnjić said he was considering that model.
His answers, published in CAPITAL’s October 10, 2025 investigation into the project’s Chinese, Russian, and Israeli components, exposed the order of priorities. The government had committed public money to powerful infrastructure. Its technology chief could offer assurances about protection, but not an established independent oversight arrangement.
He praised Russian mechanisms of “control and supervision” in the name of protecting children. He described a system spanning 15 locations, connecting public institutions and potentially businesses. He insisted that it would protect rather than attack.
Citizens were being asked to accept his characterization of a system whose contract, configuration, access rules, and safeguards they could not independently evaluate.
That problem did not stand alone.
Under Višnjić, the Agency for Information and Communication Technologies of Republika Srpska, known as AIKT, also launched a BAM 1 million advertising tender. The purchase entered the procurement plan just 12 minutes before the tender notice appeared. The agency separately confirmed plans to cooperate with Mikhail Zvinchuk, the leader of Russia’s Rybar propaganda network.
In August 2025, another paper trail surfaced: a questionnaire exploring sanctions workarounds, alternative banking channels, and cryptocurrency payments. CAPITAL reported that it had circulated from an official AIKT email address. The agency denied involvement.
These are distinct episodes, with different evidentiary records. Together, they reveal a public institution whose ambitions expanded faster than its accountability.
Republika Srpska is one of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s two entities, not an independent country. Its digital infrastructure sits inside a state bordering the European Union. Decisions made in Banja Luka therefore reach beyond an agency’s organizational chart. They affect public institutions, citizens’ information, regional financial channels, and the security interests of neighboring countries.
Višnjić is the connecting figure: a military academy graduate, police interception specialist, internationally recognized cybercrime official, presidential adviser, reported company director, and ultimately the head of an agency entrusted with information security.
His credentials gave him authority. His political relationships gave him access. The record shows what he did with both.
The earliest supplied account of Višnjić’s career begins inside Republika Srpska’s Interior Ministry.
In an October 2011 report on interception practices, journalist Slobodan Vasković described Višnjić as a graduate of the military academy in Belgrade who subsequently served in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Armed Forces. Around 2008, he moved into the RS Interior Ministry.
That account establishes the reported military background. It does not identify a specific military-intelligence assignment. The sensitive intelligence collection described in the report concerns his subsequent police work.
Vasković placed Višnjić directly at the controls of interception equipment.
The ministry had recently purchased approximately BAM 1.5 million in surveillance and interception technology from the Belgrade company Vizus. Interior Minister Stanislav Čađo confirmed the acquisition. Vasković reported that a substantial portion of its financing came from Dodik’s presidential office.
An earlier equipment purchase, approximately two years before, had cost about BAM 2.5 million.
Neither sum was described as a payment to Višnjić. The issue was who operated the systems, who controlled access, and whether the legal restrictions surrounding interception survived the personnel changes inside the ministry.
Vasković’s ministry sources described experienced personnel being removed and replaced with officials loyal to Dodik’s Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, the SNSD, and presidential adviser Miloš Čubrilović.
The specific accusation against Višnjić was technical and consequential. Vasković reported that he had enabled intercepted conversations to be played on more computers than the software license permitted, without authorization.
The report also said supervisor Zlatan Mitić was removed after criticizing him. It identified Čubrilović and criminal police chief Zoran Mandić as figures protecting Višnjić’s position and advancement.
Čađo denied misuse of the equipment. Vasković reported that the parliamentary security commission also endorsed the ministry’s position.
Those competing accounts cannot be settled by adopting either side’s confidence. They require the underlying records: authorized operator lists, system permissions, interception warrants, access logs, and the decisions governing the removal of personnel.
An interception system does not merely collect information. It concentrates power over the people whose communications pass through it. Professional relationships, confidential sources, commercial dealings, and political associations become available to whoever holds the appropriate credentials.
Expanding playback access is therefore not an obscure licensing dispute. It changes the number of people who can hear intercepted material and complicates the ability to account for its use.
The question Vasković raised in 2011 was the same question that would return in Višnjić’s later career: does the institution control its technical specialist, or does political protection place the specialist beyond effective institutional control?
Five years later, a very different institution would strengthen his professional standing.
On May 26, 2016, Banjaluka.com reported that six members of the RS Interior Ministry’s high-tech crime department had received commendations from the FBI director for international cooperation.
Višnjić, then the department’s chief, was among them.
He presented the international operation “Port Royal” as a major accomplishment, crediting it with the arrests of several dozen criminals.
The recognition gave him an internationally useful credential. He was not simply a political appointee claiming familiarity with computers. He had led sensitive investigative work and cooperated with American law enforcement.
That experience makes his later decisions harder to excuse as ignorance. A cybercrime chief understands the significance of access controls, evidentiary handling, authorization, and the difference between an official assurance and an auditable procedure.
By October 2017, however, his former department was under a different kind of scrutiny.
An October 27 report republished by BN from SrpskaCafe described an anonymous complaint concerning Višnjić and former colleagues. Police official Darko Ilić confirmed that prosecutors had instructed police to gather additional information.
The complaint questioned the use of FBI-provided equipment during “Port Royal,” which ran between March 2014 and October 2015.
It also questioned the handling of information obtained under court authority. Had the material been properly submitted to the court? Had it been copied onto external drives and passed to FBI personnel?
Those are questions about the legal chain of custody, not merely administrative tidiness. Material collected under judicial authorization must remain accountable to the authority that permitted its collection.
The complaint also questioned Višnjić’s foreign travel to Switzerland and Russia during 2015 and 2016. The travel orders, authorizations, funding records, and reports from those trips are the documents needed to establish their official basis.
The cited reporting records an instruction to check the complaint. It does not establish the final prosecutorial disposition.
That missing outcome matters. The public needs to know what investigators examined, whether they established improper handling, and how prosecutors resolved the matter. An anonymous complaint is not a verdict. An instruction to investigate is not an exoneration.
By the time those questions became public, Višnjić had left the ministry and become an adviser to Dodik.
His move carried him from a department facing scrutiny into the presidential advisory structure. The career continued. The cited account of the inquiry did not provide its conclusion.
American recognition had helped establish his competence. Dodik’s office supplied the next position.
In November 2020, Višnjić’s name appeared in a controversy far removed from cybercrime.
A BN investigation into a BAM 6 million public investment in a proposed sepsis treatment, published November 6, questioned a pharmaceutical venture associated with physician Dušan Ninkov.
BN reported that Republika Srpska’s Health Ministry had contracted to acquire a 25 percent interest in the patent. Finance Minister Zora Vidović instructed the Investment-Development Bank to assume the government’s payment obligation through three installments of BAM 2 million.
The corporate structure brought the political connection into view.
According to BN, Tesla Bioscience’s ownership included the government, Ninkov, and Belgrade-based Iris Institut. The outlet identified businessman Dragan Vasiljević as Iris Institut’s owner and Višnjić as its director.
The reported directorship placed a former Dodik adviser inside the ownership chain of a publicly financed pharmaceutical project.
It did not establish that Višnjić personally received BAM 6 million. The sum concerned the public investment. His role was managerial and institutional.
Keeping that distinction clear directs scrutiny toward the right records rather than an invented personal transfer.
What patent rights did the government acquire? What independent valuation supported the price? Which research milestones governed the investment? Which installments were authorized and actually disbursed? What clinical, commercial, or financial results followed?
A patent interest is not a demonstrated treatment. A company’s formation is not evidence that its product works. Public financing does not supply the scientific validation missing from a business proposal.
The government owed taxpayers more than a promise of future medical success. It owed them documented due diligence before committing funds and an accounting of the results afterward.
Višnjić’s reported position adds another layer of responsibility. A politically connected director participating in the corporate structure of a public investment should expect scrutiny of conflicts, relationships, decision-making, and the value obtained.
The supplied record identifies the financing arrangement and the company connection. It does not supply a completed accounting of the treatment’s development or the public investment’s return.
The same Investment-Development Bank that appeared in this pharmaceutical financing would later appear in reporting about efforts to attract Russian investment. That does not make the projects a single scheme. It shows how the entity’s public financing institutions recur across politically favored initiatives.
On January 5, 2022, the U.S. Treasury publicly described the political environment in which Višnjić’s career had advanced.
In its sanctions announcement concerning Dodik and his associated media network, Treasury accused Dodik of using public office to accumulate wealth through corruption and of building a patronage network benefiting himself and his associates.
The announcement described government contracts and monopolies awarded to close business associates.
It also addressed media control. Treasury accused Dodik of exercising behind-the-scenes control over Alternativna Televizija, or ATV, including requiring approval of politically sensitive coverage. It said he directed public money toward the station for corrupt purposes.
This was the U.S. government’s assessment of Dodik and his network. It was not a separate Treasury finding against Višnjić.
Its relevance is nevertheless direct. Treasury described a system in which contracts, political access, and media influence reinforced one another.
Within that system, an advertising tender is not politically neutral merely because it carries a procurement number. A foreign partnership does not become benign because an agency labels it educational. A technology contract does not acquire public legitimacy because an official calls it protective.
The officials responsible must show what the public receives, how suppliers are selected, what relationships influence decisions, and who can enforce limits.
Višnjić had moved through several parts of this institutional environment: policing, presidential advice, a reported corporate directorship, and another ministerial advisory role.
In 2024, he received a position that brought those experiences together.
On February 7, 2024, Mondo reported that Višnjić would replace Denis Turkanović as AIKT’s director.
Turkanović had been the first director of an agency established only a few months earlier. Višnjić arrived from an advisory position with minister Željko Budimir.
His résumé fit the government’s needs: a former high-tech crime chief with foreign operational contacts, experience advising Dodik, and familiarity with the political leadership.
The agency’s responsibilities were extensive. They included information security, oversight of security implementation, electronic government, and broader technology development.
These functions placed AIKT near the systems through which institutions operate and citizens interact with public administration. Security decisions made there concern more than equipment purchases. They concern administrative access, institutional dependencies, and the protection of information.
Višnjić understood the deficiencies.
In an April 2024 interview with Glas Srpske about outdated cybersecurity regulations, he argued that existing law did not adequately address contemporary threats. He said the preceding two decades of digitization had failed to integrate cybersecurity properly.
He promoted a cyber academy and acknowledged legal and technical gaps affecting the proposed social-card system.
That interview is an essential part of the record. It shows that the director recognized the danger of building digital systems without sufficient legal foundations.
The following month, according to CAPITAL’s reporting, the government signed the BAM 57 million ELINC agreement and attempted to conceal it from the public.
The purchase concerned a long-term technology arrangement. CAPITAL described a ten-year software deal and later reported that it combined Chinese equipment with Russian security practices and Israeli training.
The outlet identified ELINC as owned by China Electronics Corporation and reported that the parent company appeared on a U.S. blacklist.
That supplier relationship requires a precise compliance assessment, not loose assertions that every related transaction automatically violates American law. It also requires an explanation of why this vendor was selected, what alternatives were evaluated, and what risks the government accepted.
The government signed the agreement. The available account does not identify Višnjić as its signatory. His documented responsibility lies in his leadership of AIKT and his public defense and explanation of the proposed system.
The officials who signed and financed the contract remain responsible for their own decisions.
Meanwhile, the agency’s next conspicuous procurement initiative was not an independent audit or a public technical disclosure. It was a major publicity package.
On June 7, 2024, AIKT published a tender worth BAM 1 million before tax for a twelve-month media advertising framework agreement.
BAM is the convertible mark, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s currency. For an agency still establishing its operations, this was a substantial proposed publicity expenditure.
A Gerila investigation credited to procurement watchdog Pratimo Tendere, published June 10, found that the purchase did not appear in the original procurement plan.
The amendment adding it appeared just 12 minutes before the tender notice.
That interval does not prove when officials began preparing the purchase. It does document how little time separated the public appearance of the revised plan from the launch of the competition.
The specifications imposed demanding conditions.
Bidders needed particular television-distribution capabilities and access to studios in Banja Luka, East Sarajevo, and Trebinje. They needed five filming crews, five editing units, and a drone. They also needed experience with similar contracts totaling at least BAM 1 million.
Each requirement placed another condition between a potential bidder and the contract.
The watchdog compared the specifications with an earlier Trebinje procurement won by A Media, an ATV affiliate, and warned that the terms risked restricting competition.
That comparison identified a reason for scrutiny. It did not establish the eventual winner of AIKT’s tender, which the cited investigation did not identify.
The distinction does not soften the procurement problem. It defines it.
A competition can be constrained before bids arrive. Requirements that track a particular provider’s existing operational footprint demand a clear explanation of necessity. Officials must show why the public service requires those capacities rather than simply demonstrating that a bidder possesses them.
Why three studio locations? Why five crews and five editing units? What volume of public-information work required that production capacity? How would the agency measure results?
Those questions become sharper against Treasury’s description of public money reinforcing Dodik’s media network.
Višnjić had just argued that cybersecurity had been neglected for years. His agency was now preparing to buy a million-mark package of visibility.
Visibility is not the same as transparency. Advertising tells citizens what an institution wants them to hear. Disclosure lets them inspect what it has done.
Ten days after the tender notice, another announcement showed the direction of AIKT’s institutional relationships.
On June 17, 2024, Rybar announced that its leader, Mikhail Zvinchuk, and Višnjić had agreed on cooperation in the Balkans.
According to Detektor’s November 5 investigation into Rybar and the proposed media school, the plans included media education and other joint projects.
Detektor quoted Rybar celebrating the development: “Our expansion has reached a new level.”
The agency subsequently confirmed to Detektor, in July, that it would begin cooperation with Zvinchuk.
By November, the outlet was reporting plans for an agreement involving a media school and cooperation with local faculties.
The institutional commitment is the central fact. This was not simply a photograph whose significance had been inflated by critics. AIKT itself confirmed planned cooperation.
The record establishes that decision to pursue the relationship. It does not establish that every proposed school, agreement, or training component was ultimately implemented.
The identity of the prospective partner made the decision indefensible as sound information-security policy.
Detektor described Rybar as a Russian propaganda instrument. It reported that EU countries had sanctioned Zvinchuk for supporting actions undermining Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence.
The outlet also reported an EU warning that the cooperation would violate the Union’s sanctions regime.
An agency entrusted with information security was offering institutional standing to a network serving Kremlin narratives during Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Calling the project a media school did not erase that political function.
Media training builds professional relationships. It shapes habits of sourcing, framing, distribution, and audience engagement. An organization pursuing influence gains more than an audience when it establishes relationships with local communicators. It gains intermediaries able to carry its interpretations into familiar settings.
Official cooperation adds another asset: legitimacy.
A government agency and local academic partners give a foreign organization a status it cannot obtain merely by posting content online. They provide an institutional introduction.
That is the failure in Višnjić’s decision. AIKT should have subjected the proposed relationship to security and sanctions scrutiny before lending its name to it.
Instead, the agency confirmed plans to cooperate.
The full agreements, correspondence, budgets, participating institutions, and activity records are needed to establish how far the relationship developed. The public confirmation already establishes who chose to pursue it.
On August 11, 2025, CAPITAL disclosed a questionnaire exploring sanctions workarounds and cryptocurrency payments.
The outlet said it had examined the document and that it had been circulated to institutions from an official AIKT email address.
Its stated purpose was to map resources and assess cooperation with Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region in information and communication technology.
Some questions resembled ordinary investment due diligence: internet speeds, fiber coverage, laboratory resources, available infrastructure, technical standards, and patent registration.
Others pursued a different objective.
The questionnaire asked what legal structures Republika Srpska offered Russian technology companies. It asked about intermediary export routes into the European Union, including routes through Serbia and Turkey.
It sought protection from what it called secondary EU sanctions. It asked about non-EU financial channels, including Chinese and Arab banks.
It explored cryptocurrency transactions, including stablecoins, and requested information on banks offering “sanction-resistant” payment channels.
It also asked about customs arrangements independent of EU platforms and guarantees if European authorities blocked exports.
These were questions about sanctions-workaround capacity, not merely opportunities for software development.
CAPITAL’s account placed them within an existing official relationship. Republika Srpska had begun cooperation with the Nizhny Novgorod region in 2018. The outlet also described an Investment-Development Bank delegation presenting the entity’s investment profile to prospective Russian investors.
The questionnaire was separate from the Rybar media initiative. The paper trails concern different partners and purposes, but they lead through the same agency’s reported institutional channel.
AIKT denied any connection to the questionnaire.
It said the matters did not fall within its responsibilities and suggested that someone had represented themselves as acting in the agency’s name.
That answer did not resolve CAPITAL’s reported evidence of an official email connection.
An apparent official sender address is not, by itself, proof of an authorized employee’s identity. Email headers, server records, account access logs, and internal instructions are needed to distinguish authorized circulation from misuse, compromise, or impersonation.
Those are precisely the records a cybersecurity agency should preserve and examine.
If the circulation was unauthorized, AIKT had a security incident to investigate. If it was authorized, it had an institutional decision to explain.
The published response did not identify the sender or provide the technical findings needed to settle that contradiction.
CAPITAL’s reporting did not establish Višnjić’s personal authorship. Nor did it establish a completed sanctions-evasion transaction.
It established a document containing explicit workaround questions, a reported connection to an official communications channel, and an agency denial that left the central issue unanswered.
The questionnaire also pressed into matters beyond an entity’s unilateral authority. International trade arrangements are state-level responsibilities. A questionnaire cannot confer on Republika Srpska powers that Bosnia and Herzegovina’s constitutional framework assigns elsewhere.
The risk was not confined to a Russian investor seeking a convenient payment route. Institutions and businesses in Bosnia and Herzegovina would bear the consequences of any unlawful facilitation.
The agency’s invocation of European programs in its denial made the contradiction more pronounced: it presented itself as pursuing European institutional engagement while a document reportedly circulated from its address explored protection from European restrictions.
The answer belongs in an authenticated incident report, not another promotional statement.
By October 2025, Višnjić was publicly defending the ELINC project at a seminar concerning digital rights and the safety of journalists and activists.
CAPITAL published his answers on October 10.
He said Chinese systems supplied the technology, Russian practices supplied organizational methods, and Israeli cooperation supplied training.
He praised Russia’s mechanisms of “control and supervision” concerning child protection and said those practices would be used locally.
The proposed system, he explained, would protect critical infrastructure through sectoral arrangements covering institutions such as health, government administration, energy, and finance.
Children would have a separate protective package. Institutions would connect across 15 locations, with small and medium-sized businesses also offered access.
He said the system would not read communications content and characterized the equipment as conventional firewalls processing metadata related to cyber threats.
Those statements deserve technical examination, not automatic acceptance or automatic rejection.
A firewall is not, by definition, a mass-surveillance platform. The relevant questions concern what this particular deployment is configured to inspect, retain, block, and share.
Metadata is not empty information. Depending on the fields collected, it can reveal connections, device activity, timing, and patterns without reproducing the contents of a message.
The specifications must establish which data enters the system, who can access it, how long it remains, and what uses are permitted.
Administrative credentials matter. Remote maintenance permissions matter. Audit logs matter. The ability to change filtering rules matters.
So does the legal mechanism that prevents a security function from becoming an instrument for monitoring political opponents or restricting journalism.
CAPITAL reported further proposed architecture: 15 nodes by 2027, a data center at the electrical engineering faculty in East Sarajevo, and a main support center in Kragujevac, Serbia.
Those locations introduce another set of responsibilities. Which institution operates each component? Which company controls maintenance? Who holds the administrative credentials? What access crosses the border?
The same CAPITAL account traced disclosures to an April 11 government conference in Banja Luka, closed to journalists and the public. The outlet reported that the presentation addressed institutions and children, but also referred to media producing “bad news.”
That phrase requires investigation in the context of the system’s procurement and intended use.
Reporting that embarrasses the government is not a cyberattack. Political criticism is not malware.
Višnjić publicly denied that the system would be used to control media. His denial does not substitute for technical restrictions and enforceable law.
CAPITAL quoted attorney Aleksandar Jokić criticizing the purchase of solutions before the creation of an adequate legal framework and independent control.
The sequence remained the central defect.
The BAM 57 million agreement had been signed. Asked about independent oversight against abuse, Višnjić said he was considering the model.
This was the same director who had warned, in April 2024, that digital systems were outpacing their legal foundations.
He recognized the problem. His explanation did not show that the government had solved it.
On November 13, 2025, CAPITAL reported that Višnjić had submitted his resignation but that it had not been accepted.
Asked whether the director had been dismissed, Prime Minister Savo Minić said he had not.
Asked whether he had resigned, Minić replied: “I haven’t seen it.”
CAPITAL reported that Višnjić did not answer its calls that day.
The account did not establish a completed departure. It established a reported resignation, an unaccepted exit, and a prime minister unwilling or unable to clarify the position.
Nor did the account provide a reckoning with the agency’s decisions.
A resignation letter cannot explain the design of an advertising tender. It cannot establish the safeguards governing a technology system or authenticate the sender of a sanctions questionnaire.
It cannot disclose what was signed with Rybar.
The government’s responsibility did not end with whether it retained or replaced one director. It had empowered him. It had signed the major technology agreement. It controlled the institutional mechanisms through which his decisions should have been reviewed.
The public needs the subsequent personnel decisions and the records of any disciplinary, security, procurement, or prosecutorial examination.
The November report documents the uncertainty at that moment. It does not establish Višnjić’s employment status throughout the following year.
On January 13, 2026, CAPITAL reported more than BAM 30,000 in AIKT spending on travel, hotels, and hospitality during 2025.
The reported expenditure included nearly BAM 13,000 paid to VTTI Travel, approximately BAM 4,100 to the Integra Inženjering hotel in Banja Luka, and BAM 3,175 to Zepter Passport.
Other reported purchases involved hotels in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
These were agency expenditures. The itemized amounts do not establish private holidays or unlawful personal benefits. Their proper financial test is official purpose: approved travelers, supporting receipts, authorized activities, and results.
The accompanying disclosure made the institutional contrast difficult to defend.
As of that January report, AIKT’s website remained under construction.
An agency responsible for digital development could arrange travel and hospitality while failing to complete its basic public-facing site.
The amount was small beside the ELINC agreement. The disclosure failure was not.
A functioning website would have provided an obvious place to publish procurement decisions, annual reports, foreign-cooperation documents, financial summaries, and the rules governing information security.
It would not have proved that the agency was competent. It would have made basic accountability easier.
The agency had prepared a million-mark publicity procurement. Its routine disclosure infrastructure remained unfinished.
Public communication is not measured by the volume of favorable coverage an institution purchases. It is measured by whether citizens can obtain reliable information about its decisions.
On September 23, 2026, Detektor reported on a security assessment of Rybar by Spain-based Alto Intelligence.
The assessment described the organization as an “Advanced Persistent Manipulator.”
The phrase identifies an influence threat, not a conventional hacking group or a judicial finding.
As presented by Detektor, the assessment concerned infrastructure capable of rapidly producing, localizing, and distributing interpretations across languages and regions.
The outlet also described official Kremlin support for Rybar and its Balkan-oriented content operation.
That model goes beyond an isolated falsehood.
An influence network can shape the interpretive setting in which audiences encounter events: which facts receive emphasis, which institutions appear trustworthy, which grievances are reinforced, and which political actors are presented as protectors.
Localization is especially valuable. Content adapted to a region’s language and disputes does not arrive as an obvious foreign instruction. It reaches audiences through familiar references and intermediaries.
This is why AIKT’s confirmed plan mattered.
Institutional cooperation offers a foreign influence network relationships, credibility, and entry into established educational settings. A media school provides a framework for developing those relationships under an apparently professional purpose.
The 2026 assessment did not establish that every AIKT proposal had been implemented. It sharpened the security implications of the partner the agency had chosen to pursue.
The correspondence, agreements, training records, funding, and participants must establish the relationship’s actual extent.
The responsibility for the initial decision is already visible. Višnjić’s agency confirmed that it intended to cooperate with Zvinchuk.
Višnjić’s career cannot be reduced to a single contract or a single accusation.
It moves through institutions that control sensitive information, allocate public money, and confer political legitimacy.
The 2011 report raised questions about interception access and political protection. The 2017 complaint prompted prosecutorial checks into equipment and investigative material. The 2020 investigation placed him in a company participating in a publicly financed pharmaceutical venture.
His later agency pursued a major advertising tender, confirmed plans for Rybar cooperation, and became the reported source of a sanctions-workaround questionnaire that it disowned.
He publicly defended the ELINC architecture while describing independent oversight as something still under consideration.
These records do not establish one centrally managed conspiracy or a personal payment encompassing every sum. They establish separate decisions and connections requiring separate investigations.
They also establish political responsibility.
Technical expertise does not excuse weak safeguards. International commendations do not justify future partnerships. A director’s proximity to the ruling leadership does not relieve him of the duty to explain his decisions.
Nor does a resignation relieve the government of its responsibility to account for contracts, foreign cooperation, and institutional communications.
The officials involved must answer in documents: signed decisions, authenticated records, financial statements, technical audits, and prosecutorial dispositions.
That obligation extends from Banja Luka and Sarajevo to Washington and the capitals of Europe.
Who approved the ELINC agreement, who signed it, and who authorized its financing?
Publish the contract, amendments, procurement basis, payment schedule, supplier ownership information, and the security assessments used to select the vendor. Identify any narrowly justified security redactions rather than treating the entire purchase as beyond public scrutiny.
What exactly has been purchased, installed, accepted, and paid for? Which promised components remain undelivered?
Which law authorizes each category of collection, retention, filtering, and access? Who holds administrative privileges at the 15 proposed locations? What access belongs to foreign suppliers or the support operation in Serbia?
Who, outside the chain of officials and contractors that procured the system, has authority to inspect it, stop unlawful activity, and impose consequences?
Has an independent technical body examined the actual configuration? If so, publish its findings and limitations. If not, why did the government commit BAM 57 million before establishing that review?
On the advertising tender, who approved the procurement-plan amendment? Why did it appear just 12 minutes before the notice? Who justified the three-city studio requirement, five crews, five editing units, and drone?
Who submitted bids? Who won? What was paid? Where are the delivered materials and the evaluation of their public value?
On the pharmaceutical investment, identify the patent rights purchased, the independent valuation, the research milestones, and every authorized disbursement. What did the public obtain for the BAM 6 million commitment? Which deliverables exist beyond contractual promises?
Release the final disposition of the 2017 checks concerning “Port Royal.” What happened to the equipment and court-authorized material identified in the complaint? Who authorized any transfer to foreign personnel and the foreign travel under examination?
On Rybar, publish the correspondence, proposed and executed agreements, legal reviews, participating faculties, training activities, and funding. What security assessment justified offering an institutional partnership to Zvinchuk?
On the sanctions questionnaire, identify the sender through authenticated records. Was the official account used legitimately, misused internally, compromised, or impersonated? Which findings support the answer?
What action followed against anyone responsible?
And what became of Višnjić’s resignation? Which officials continued to entrust him with authority after the foreign-cooperation disclosures, and what review justified that decision?
Why did the government’s November 2025 account leave his position unresolved rather than provide a clear explanation of the agency’s conduct?
Who accepted responsibility for opening these institutional doors?
What vetting preceded the FBI director’s 2016 commendations, and what review followed the 2017 prosecutorial checks?
The award recognized cooperation. It also conferred prestige on an official who later entered Dodik’s advisory structure and defended an agency project combining Chinese technology with Russian control practices.
How did that professional trajectory develop without an adequate public accounting of the earlier questions?
For the FBI and Justice Department, did American personnel receive any investigative material identified in the 2017 complaint? If so, what legal authority governed its transfer? Who maintained the chain of custody? What obligations existed toward the courts that authorized collection?
What equipment did the United States provide, under which agreements, and with what controls over its subsequent use?
Preserve the records and provide a public account of the legal framework without exposing protected investigative information.
For the State Department, how has Treasury’s 2022 description of Dodik’s corrupt patronage and media-control network informed scrutiny of subsequent public technology and advertising projects?
What supplier-risk and sanctions review has examined ELINC and its reported parent, China Electronics Corporation? Which specific American restrictions apply to the relevant companies, financing, or transactions?
Who has assessed the proposed Russian security practices and AIKT’s confirmed plans for Rybar cooperation?
Has the August 2025 questionnaire prompted examination of financial intermediaries, ownership structures, or transactions with a U.S. jurisdictional connection?
The question is not whether an old commendation can predict every future decision. It is whether American agencies reassess former operational partners when later records reveal serious security and accountability concerns.
How did an FBI-recognized cybercrime chief become the public defender of this Chinese and Russian technology arrangement?
What does the U.S. government know about that progression, what has it investigated, and what action has followed?
Detektor reported an EU warning about the Rybar cooperation in 2024. What followed that warning?
State the legal status of Zvinchuk and Rybar, the relevant designation dates, the applicable prohibitions, and the jurisdictions responsible for enforcement.
Which authorities examined AIKT’s confirmed plan to cooperate? What records did they request? What conclusions did they reach?
Why has an institutional relationship with a Russian influence leader reported as sanctioned been permitted to advance without a clear public account of the European response?
Bosnia and Herzegovina’s location outside the Union does not place every related financial or commercial transaction outside European jurisdiction. European authorities control their own banks, companies, customs enforcement, and sanctions obligations.
What scrutiny has been applied to the channels identified in the August 2025 questionnaire?
Which agencies examined proposed routes through Serbia, Turkey, and EU territory? Which financial intelligence units assessed the references to alternative banks, cryptocurrency, and stablecoin payments?
Were requests for assistance sent to authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and neighboring countries? Were beneficial owners and intermediaries checked for prohibited activity?
Report the enforcement outcomes. Do not substitute another general declaration about European security.
What have member-state security services done with the threat described in Alto Intelligence’s assessment of Rybar? How are they distinguishing lawful expression from coordinated foreign influence activity requiring sanctions or security intervention?
What conditions govern European support for public digital institutions that pursue such partnerships? What independent safeguards protect journalists, civil society organizations, and citizens whose information enters the proposed systems?
The Western Balkans cannot be treated as a peripheral concern when the financial channels, influence operations, and infrastructure under examination sit directly beside the Union.
Which lawful, targeted measures will prevent prohibited transactions and sanctioned influence operators from exploiting those institutional openings?
Who is responsible for carrying them out?
And by what date will the public see the results?
By the time Dražen Višnjić publicly explained the technology project, Republika Srpska’s government had already signed an agreement worth BAM 57 million with the Chinese company ELINC. The proposed combination was explicit: Chinese hardware and software, Russian organizational practices, and Israeli training.
Asked who would independently guard against abuse, Višnjić said he was considering that model.
His answers, published in CAPITAL’s October 10, 2025 investigation into the project’s Chinese, Russian, and Israeli components, exposed the order of priorities. The government had committed public money to powerful infrastructure. Its technology chief could offer assurances about protection, but not an established independent oversight arrangement.
He praised Russian mechanisms of “control and supervision” in the name of protecting children. He described a system spanning 15 locations, connecting public institutions and potentially businesses. He insisted that it would protect rather than attack.
Citizens were being asked to accept his characterization of a system whose contract, configuration, access rules, and safeguards they could not independently evaluate.
That problem did not stand alone.
Under Višnjić, the Agency for Information and Communication Technologies of Republika Srpska, known as AIKT, also launched a BAM 1 million advertising tender. The purchase entered the procurement plan just 12 minutes before the tender notice appeared. The agency separately confirmed plans to cooperate with Mikhail Zvinchuk, the leader of Russia’s Rybar propaganda network.
In August 2025, another paper trail surfaced: a questionnaire exploring sanctions workarounds, alternative banking channels, and cryptocurrency payments. CAPITAL reported that it had circulated from an official AIKT email address. The agency denied involvement.
These are distinct episodes, with different evidentiary records. Together, they reveal a public institution whose ambitions expanded faster than its accountability.
Republika Srpska is one of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s two entities, not an independent country. Its digital infrastructure sits inside a state bordering the European Union. Decisions made in Banja Luka therefore reach beyond an agency’s organizational chart. They affect public institutions, citizens’ information, regional financial channels, and the security interests of neighboring countries.
Višnjić is the connecting figure: a military academy graduate, police interception specialist, internationally recognized cybercrime official, presidential adviser, reported company director, and ultimately the head of an agency entrusted with information security.
His credentials gave him authority. His political relationships gave him access. The record shows what he did with both.
The interception system and the political patrons
The earliest supplied account of Višnjić’s career begins inside Republika Srpska’s Interior Ministry.
In an October 2011 report on interception practices, journalist Slobodan Vasković described Višnjić as a graduate of the military academy in Belgrade who subsequently served in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Armed Forces. Around 2008, he moved into the RS Interior Ministry.
That account establishes the reported military background. It does not identify a specific military-intelligence assignment. The sensitive intelligence collection described in the report concerns his subsequent police work.
Vasković placed Višnjić directly at the controls of interception equipment.
The ministry had recently purchased approximately BAM 1.5 million in surveillance and interception technology from the Belgrade company Vizus. Interior Minister Stanislav Čađo confirmed the acquisition. Vasković reported that a substantial portion of its financing came from Dodik’s presidential office.
An earlier equipment purchase, approximately two years before, had cost about BAM 2.5 million.
Neither sum was described as a payment to Višnjić. The issue was who operated the systems, who controlled access, and whether the legal restrictions surrounding interception survived the personnel changes inside the ministry.
Vasković’s ministry sources described experienced personnel being removed and replaced with officials loyal to Dodik’s Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, the SNSD, and presidential adviser Miloš Čubrilović.
The specific accusation against Višnjić was technical and consequential. Vasković reported that he had enabled intercepted conversations to be played on more computers than the software license permitted, without authorization.
The report also said supervisor Zlatan Mitić was removed after criticizing him. It identified Čubrilović and criminal police chief Zoran Mandić as figures protecting Višnjić’s position and advancement.
Čađo denied misuse of the equipment. Vasković reported that the parliamentary security commission also endorsed the ministry’s position.
Those competing accounts cannot be settled by adopting either side’s confidence. They require the underlying records: authorized operator lists, system permissions, interception warrants, access logs, and the decisions governing the removal of personnel.
An interception system does not merely collect information. It concentrates power over the people whose communications pass through it. Professional relationships, confidential sources, commercial dealings, and political associations become available to whoever holds the appropriate credentials.
Expanding playback access is therefore not an obscure licensing dispute. It changes the number of people who can hear intercepted material and complicates the ability to account for its use.
The question Vasković raised in 2011 was the same question that would return in Višnjić’s later career: does the institution control its technical specialist, or does political protection place the specialist beyond effective institutional control?
Five years later, a very different institution would strengthen his professional standing.
An FBI commendation, followed by questions about the evidence
On May 26, 2016, Banjaluka.com reported that six members of the RS Interior Ministry’s high-tech crime department had received commendations from the FBI director for international cooperation.
Višnjić, then the department’s chief, was among them.
He presented the international operation “Port Royal” as a major accomplishment, crediting it with the arrests of several dozen criminals.
The recognition gave him an internationally useful credential. He was not simply a political appointee claiming familiarity with computers. He had led sensitive investigative work and cooperated with American law enforcement.
That experience makes his later decisions harder to excuse as ignorance. A cybercrime chief understands the significance of access controls, evidentiary handling, authorization, and the difference between an official assurance and an auditable procedure.
By October 2017, however, his former department was under a different kind of scrutiny.
An October 27 report republished by BN from SrpskaCafe described an anonymous complaint concerning Višnjić and former colleagues. Police official Darko Ilić confirmed that prosecutors had instructed police to gather additional information.
The complaint questioned the use of FBI-provided equipment during “Port Royal,” which ran between March 2014 and October 2015.
It also questioned the handling of information obtained under court authority. Had the material been properly submitted to the court? Had it been copied onto external drives and passed to FBI personnel?
Those are questions about the legal chain of custody, not merely administrative tidiness. Material collected under judicial authorization must remain accountable to the authority that permitted its collection.
The complaint also questioned Višnjić’s foreign travel to Switzerland and Russia during 2015 and 2016. The travel orders, authorizations, funding records, and reports from those trips are the documents needed to establish their official basis.
The cited reporting records an instruction to check the complaint. It does not establish the final prosecutorial disposition.
That missing outcome matters. The public needs to know what investigators examined, whether they established improper handling, and how prosecutors resolved the matter. An anonymous complaint is not a verdict. An instruction to investigate is not an exoneration.
By the time those questions became public, Višnjić had left the ministry and become an adviser to Dodik.
His move carried him from a department facing scrutiny into the presidential advisory structure. The career continued. The cited account of the inquiry did not provide its conclusion.
American recognition had helped establish his competence. Dodik’s office supplied the next position.
BAM 6 million for a sepsis patent
In November 2020, Višnjić’s name appeared in a controversy far removed from cybercrime.
A BN investigation into a BAM 6 million public investment in a proposed sepsis treatment, published November 6, questioned a pharmaceutical venture associated with physician Dušan Ninkov.
BN reported that Republika Srpska’s Health Ministry had contracted to acquire a 25 percent interest in the patent. Finance Minister Zora Vidović instructed the Investment-Development Bank to assume the government’s payment obligation through three installments of BAM 2 million.
The corporate structure brought the political connection into view.
According to BN, Tesla Bioscience’s ownership included the government, Ninkov, and Belgrade-based Iris Institut. The outlet identified businessman Dragan Vasiljević as Iris Institut’s owner and Višnjić as its director.
The reported directorship placed a former Dodik adviser inside the ownership chain of a publicly financed pharmaceutical project.
It did not establish that Višnjić personally received BAM 6 million. The sum concerned the public investment. His role was managerial and institutional.
Keeping that distinction clear directs scrutiny toward the right records rather than an invented personal transfer.
What patent rights did the government acquire? What independent valuation supported the price? Which research milestones governed the investment? Which installments were authorized and actually disbursed? What clinical, commercial, or financial results followed?
A patent interest is not a demonstrated treatment. A company’s formation is not evidence that its product works. Public financing does not supply the scientific validation missing from a business proposal.
The government owed taxpayers more than a promise of future medical success. It owed them documented due diligence before committing funds and an accounting of the results afterward.
Višnjić’s reported position adds another layer of responsibility. A politically connected director participating in the corporate structure of a public investment should expect scrutiny of conflicts, relationships, decision-making, and the value obtained.
The supplied record identifies the financing arrangement and the company connection. It does not supply a completed accounting of the treatment’s development or the public investment’s return.
The same Investment-Development Bank that appeared in this pharmaceutical financing would later appear in reporting about efforts to attract Russian investment. That does not make the projects a single scheme. It shows how the entity’s public financing institutions recur across politically favored initiatives.
Washington’s description of Dodik’s system
On January 5, 2022, the U.S. Treasury publicly described the political environment in which Višnjić’s career had advanced.
In its sanctions announcement concerning Dodik and his associated media network, Treasury accused Dodik of using public office to accumulate wealth through corruption and of building a patronage network benefiting himself and his associates.
The announcement described government contracts and monopolies awarded to close business associates.
It also addressed media control. Treasury accused Dodik of exercising behind-the-scenes control over Alternativna Televizija, or ATV, including requiring approval of politically sensitive coverage. It said he directed public money toward the station for corrupt purposes.
This was the U.S. government’s assessment of Dodik and his network. It was not a separate Treasury finding against Višnjić.
Its relevance is nevertheless direct. Treasury described a system in which contracts, political access, and media influence reinforced one another.
Within that system, an advertising tender is not politically neutral merely because it carries a procurement number. A foreign partnership does not become benign because an agency labels it educational. A technology contract does not acquire public legitimacy because an official calls it protective.
The officials responsible must show what the public receives, how suppliers are selected, what relationships influence decisions, and who can enforce limits.
Višnjić had moved through several parts of this institutional environment: policing, presidential advice, a reported corporate directorship, and another ministerial advisory role.
In 2024, he received a position that brought those experiences together.
A new agency, an old insider
On February 7, 2024, Mondo reported that Višnjić would replace Denis Turkanović as AIKT’s director.
Turkanović had been the first director of an agency established only a few months earlier. Višnjić arrived from an advisory position with minister Željko Budimir.
His résumé fit the government’s needs: a former high-tech crime chief with foreign operational contacts, experience advising Dodik, and familiarity with the political leadership.
The agency’s responsibilities were extensive. They included information security, oversight of security implementation, electronic government, and broader technology development.
These functions placed AIKT near the systems through which institutions operate and citizens interact with public administration. Security decisions made there concern more than equipment purchases. They concern administrative access, institutional dependencies, and the protection of information.
Višnjić understood the deficiencies.
In an April 2024 interview with Glas Srpske about outdated cybersecurity regulations, he argued that existing law did not adequately address contemporary threats. He said the preceding two decades of digitization had failed to integrate cybersecurity properly.
He promoted a cyber academy and acknowledged legal and technical gaps affecting the proposed social-card system.
That interview is an essential part of the record. It shows that the director recognized the danger of building digital systems without sufficient legal foundations.
The following month, according to CAPITAL’s reporting, the government signed the BAM 57 million ELINC agreement and attempted to conceal it from the public.
The purchase concerned a long-term technology arrangement. CAPITAL described a ten-year software deal and later reported that it combined Chinese equipment with Russian security practices and Israeli training.
The outlet identified ELINC as owned by China Electronics Corporation and reported that the parent company appeared on a U.S. blacklist.
That supplier relationship requires a precise compliance assessment, not loose assertions that every related transaction automatically violates American law. It also requires an explanation of why this vendor was selected, what alternatives were evaluated, and what risks the government accepted.
The government signed the agreement. The available account does not identify Višnjić as its signatory. His documented responsibility lies in his leadership of AIKT and his public defense and explanation of the proposed system.
The officials who signed and financed the contract remain responsible for their own decisions.
Meanwhile, the agency’s next conspicuous procurement initiative was not an independent audit or a public technical disclosure. It was a major publicity package.
Twelve minutes, one million marks
On June 7, 2024, AIKT published a tender worth BAM 1 million before tax for a twelve-month media advertising framework agreement.
BAM is the convertible mark, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s currency. For an agency still establishing its operations, this was a substantial proposed publicity expenditure.
A Gerila investigation credited to procurement watchdog Pratimo Tendere, published June 10, found that the purchase did not appear in the original procurement plan.
The amendment adding it appeared just 12 minutes before the tender notice.
That interval does not prove when officials began preparing the purchase. It does document how little time separated the public appearance of the revised plan from the launch of the competition.
The specifications imposed demanding conditions.
Bidders needed particular television-distribution capabilities and access to studios in Banja Luka, East Sarajevo, and Trebinje. They needed five filming crews, five editing units, and a drone. They also needed experience with similar contracts totaling at least BAM 1 million.
Each requirement placed another condition between a potential bidder and the contract.
The watchdog compared the specifications with an earlier Trebinje procurement won by A Media, an ATV affiliate, and warned that the terms risked restricting competition.
That comparison identified a reason for scrutiny. It did not establish the eventual winner of AIKT’s tender, which the cited investigation did not identify.
The distinction does not soften the procurement problem. It defines it.
A competition can be constrained before bids arrive. Requirements that track a particular provider’s existing operational footprint demand a clear explanation of necessity. Officials must show why the public service requires those capacities rather than simply demonstrating that a bidder possesses them.
Why three studio locations? Why five crews and five editing units? What volume of public-information work required that production capacity? How would the agency measure results?
Those questions become sharper against Treasury’s description of public money reinforcing Dodik’s media network.
Višnjić had just argued that cybersecurity had been neglected for years. His agency was now preparing to buy a million-mark package of visibility.
Visibility is not the same as transparency. Advertising tells citizens what an institution wants them to hear. Disclosure lets them inspect what it has done.
Ten days after the tender notice, another announcement showed the direction of AIKT’s institutional relationships.
The door opened to Rybar
On June 17, 2024, Rybar announced that its leader, Mikhail Zvinchuk, and Višnjić had agreed on cooperation in the Balkans.
According to Detektor’s November 5 investigation into Rybar and the proposed media school, the plans included media education and other joint projects.
Detektor quoted Rybar celebrating the development: “Our expansion has reached a new level.”
The agency subsequently confirmed to Detektor, in July, that it would begin cooperation with Zvinchuk.
By November, the outlet was reporting plans for an agreement involving a media school and cooperation with local faculties.
The institutional commitment is the central fact. This was not simply a photograph whose significance had been inflated by critics. AIKT itself confirmed planned cooperation.
The record establishes that decision to pursue the relationship. It does not establish that every proposed school, agreement, or training component was ultimately implemented.
The identity of the prospective partner made the decision indefensible as sound information-security policy.
Detektor described Rybar as a Russian propaganda instrument. It reported that EU countries had sanctioned Zvinchuk for supporting actions undermining Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence.
The outlet also reported an EU warning that the cooperation would violate the Union’s sanctions regime.
An agency entrusted with information security was offering institutional standing to a network serving Kremlin narratives during Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Calling the project a media school did not erase that political function.
Media training builds professional relationships. It shapes habits of sourcing, framing, distribution, and audience engagement. An organization pursuing influence gains more than an audience when it establishes relationships with local communicators. It gains intermediaries able to carry its interpretations into familiar settings.
Official cooperation adds another asset: legitimacy.
A government agency and local academic partners give a foreign organization a status it cannot obtain merely by posting content online. They provide an institutional introduction.
That is the failure in Višnjić’s decision. AIKT should have subjected the proposed relationship to security and sanctions scrutiny before lending its name to it.
Instead, the agency confirmed plans to cooperate.
The full agreements, correspondence, budgets, participating institutions, and activity records are needed to establish how far the relationship developed. The public confirmation already establishes who chose to pursue it.
The sanctions questionnaire and the official inbox
On August 11, 2025, CAPITAL disclosed a questionnaire exploring sanctions workarounds and cryptocurrency payments.
The outlet said it had examined the document and that it had been circulated to institutions from an official AIKT email address.
Its stated purpose was to map resources and assess cooperation with Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region in information and communication technology.
Some questions resembled ordinary investment due diligence: internet speeds, fiber coverage, laboratory resources, available infrastructure, technical standards, and patent registration.
Others pursued a different objective.
The questionnaire asked what legal structures Republika Srpska offered Russian technology companies. It asked about intermediary export routes into the European Union, including routes through Serbia and Turkey.
It sought protection from what it called secondary EU sanctions. It asked about non-EU financial channels, including Chinese and Arab banks.
It explored cryptocurrency transactions, including stablecoins, and requested information on banks offering “sanction-resistant” payment channels.
It also asked about customs arrangements independent of EU platforms and guarantees if European authorities blocked exports.
These were questions about sanctions-workaround capacity, not merely opportunities for software development.
CAPITAL’s account placed them within an existing official relationship. Republika Srpska had begun cooperation with the Nizhny Novgorod region in 2018. The outlet also described an Investment-Development Bank delegation presenting the entity’s investment profile to prospective Russian investors.
The questionnaire was separate from the Rybar media initiative. The paper trails concern different partners and purposes, but they lead through the same agency’s reported institutional channel.
AIKT denied any connection to the questionnaire.
It said the matters did not fall within its responsibilities and suggested that someone had represented themselves as acting in the agency’s name.
That answer did not resolve CAPITAL’s reported evidence of an official email connection.
An apparent official sender address is not, by itself, proof of an authorized employee’s identity. Email headers, server records, account access logs, and internal instructions are needed to distinguish authorized circulation from misuse, compromise, or impersonation.
Those are precisely the records a cybersecurity agency should preserve and examine.
If the circulation was unauthorized, AIKT had a security incident to investigate. If it was authorized, it had an institutional decision to explain.
The published response did not identify the sender or provide the technical findings needed to settle that contradiction.
CAPITAL’s reporting did not establish Višnjić’s personal authorship. Nor did it establish a completed sanctions-evasion transaction.
It established a document containing explicit workaround questions, a reported connection to an official communications channel, and an agency denial that left the central issue unanswered.
The questionnaire also pressed into matters beyond an entity’s unilateral authority. International trade arrangements are state-level responsibilities. A questionnaire cannot confer on Republika Srpska powers that Bosnia and Herzegovina’s constitutional framework assigns elsewhere.
The risk was not confined to a Russian investor seeking a convenient payment route. Institutions and businesses in Bosnia and Herzegovina would bear the consequences of any unlawful facilitation.
The agency’s invocation of European programs in its denial made the contradiction more pronounced: it presented itself as pursuing European institutional engagement while a document reportedly circulated from its address explored protection from European restrictions.
The answer belongs in an authenticated incident report, not another promotional statement.
Russian control practices, sold as protection
By October 2025, Višnjić was publicly defending the ELINC project at a seminar concerning digital rights and the safety of journalists and activists.
CAPITAL published his answers on October 10.
He said Chinese systems supplied the technology, Russian practices supplied organizational methods, and Israeli cooperation supplied training.
He praised Russia’s mechanisms of “control and supervision” concerning child protection and said those practices would be used locally.
The proposed system, he explained, would protect critical infrastructure through sectoral arrangements covering institutions such as health, government administration, energy, and finance.
Children would have a separate protective package. Institutions would connect across 15 locations, with small and medium-sized businesses also offered access.
He said the system would not read communications content and characterized the equipment as conventional firewalls processing metadata related to cyber threats.
Those statements deserve technical examination, not automatic acceptance or automatic rejection.
A firewall is not, by definition, a mass-surveillance platform. The relevant questions concern what this particular deployment is configured to inspect, retain, block, and share.
Metadata is not empty information. Depending on the fields collected, it can reveal connections, device activity, timing, and patterns without reproducing the contents of a message.
The specifications must establish which data enters the system, who can access it, how long it remains, and what uses are permitted.
Administrative credentials matter. Remote maintenance permissions matter. Audit logs matter. The ability to change filtering rules matters.
So does the legal mechanism that prevents a security function from becoming an instrument for monitoring political opponents or restricting journalism.
CAPITAL reported further proposed architecture: 15 nodes by 2027, a data center at the electrical engineering faculty in East Sarajevo, and a main support center in Kragujevac, Serbia.
Those locations introduce another set of responsibilities. Which institution operates each component? Which company controls maintenance? Who holds the administrative credentials? What access crosses the border?
The same CAPITAL account traced disclosures to an April 11 government conference in Banja Luka, closed to journalists and the public. The outlet reported that the presentation addressed institutions and children, but also referred to media producing “bad news.”
That phrase requires investigation in the context of the system’s procurement and intended use.
Reporting that embarrasses the government is not a cyberattack. Political criticism is not malware.
Višnjić publicly denied that the system would be used to control media. His denial does not substitute for technical restrictions and enforceable law.
CAPITAL quoted attorney Aleksandar Jokić criticizing the purchase of solutions before the creation of an adequate legal framework and independent control.
The sequence remained the central defect.
The BAM 57 million agreement had been signed. Asked about independent oversight against abuse, Višnjić said he was considering the model.
This was the same director who had warned, in April 2024, that digital systems were outpacing their legal foundations.
He recognized the problem. His explanation did not show that the government had solved it.
A resignation that did not complete the departure
On November 13, 2025, CAPITAL reported that Višnjić had submitted his resignation but that it had not been accepted.
Asked whether the director had been dismissed, Prime Minister Savo Minić said he had not.
Asked whether he had resigned, Minić replied: “I haven’t seen it.”
CAPITAL reported that Višnjić did not answer its calls that day.
The account did not establish a completed departure. It established a reported resignation, an unaccepted exit, and a prime minister unwilling or unable to clarify the position.
Nor did the account provide a reckoning with the agency’s decisions.
A resignation letter cannot explain the design of an advertising tender. It cannot establish the safeguards governing a technology system or authenticate the sender of a sanctions questionnaire.
It cannot disclose what was signed with Rybar.
The government’s responsibility did not end with whether it retained or replaced one director. It had empowered him. It had signed the major technology agreement. It controlled the institutional mechanisms through which his decisions should have been reviewed.
The public needs the subsequent personnel decisions and the records of any disciplinary, security, procurement, or prosecutorial examination.
The November report documents the uncertainty at that moment. It does not establish Višnjić’s employment status throughout the following year.
The bills were paid. The website was still unfinished.
On January 13, 2026, CAPITAL reported more than BAM 30,000 in AIKT spending on travel, hotels, and hospitality during 2025.
The reported expenditure included nearly BAM 13,000 paid to VTTI Travel, approximately BAM 4,100 to the Integra Inženjering hotel in Banja Luka, and BAM 3,175 to Zepter Passport.
Other reported purchases involved hotels in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
These were agency expenditures. The itemized amounts do not establish private holidays or unlawful personal benefits. Their proper financial test is official purpose: approved travelers, supporting receipts, authorized activities, and results.
The accompanying disclosure made the institutional contrast difficult to defend.
As of that January report, AIKT’s website remained under construction.
An agency responsible for digital development could arrange travel and hospitality while failing to complete its basic public-facing site.
The amount was small beside the ELINC agreement. The disclosure failure was not.
A functioning website would have provided an obvious place to publish procurement decisions, annual reports, foreign-cooperation documents, financial summaries, and the rules governing information security.
It would not have proved that the agency was competent. It would have made basic accountability easier.
The agency had prepared a million-mark publicity procurement. Its routine disclosure infrastructure remained unfinished.
Public communication is not measured by the volume of favorable coverage an institution purchases. It is measured by whether citizens can obtain reliable information about its decisions.
Rybar as an “Advanced Persistent Manipulator”
On September 23, 2026, Detektor reported on a security assessment of Rybar by Spain-based Alto Intelligence.
The assessment described the organization as an “Advanced Persistent Manipulator.”
The phrase identifies an influence threat, not a conventional hacking group or a judicial finding.
As presented by Detektor, the assessment concerned infrastructure capable of rapidly producing, localizing, and distributing interpretations across languages and regions.
The outlet also described official Kremlin support for Rybar and its Balkan-oriented content operation.
That model goes beyond an isolated falsehood.
An influence network can shape the interpretive setting in which audiences encounter events: which facts receive emphasis, which institutions appear trustworthy, which grievances are reinforced, and which political actors are presented as protectors.
Localization is especially valuable. Content adapted to a region’s language and disputes does not arrive as an obvious foreign instruction. It reaches audiences through familiar references and intermediaries.
This is why AIKT’s confirmed plan mattered.
Institutional cooperation offers a foreign influence network relationships, credibility, and entry into established educational settings. A media school provides a framework for developing those relationships under an apparently professional purpose.
The 2026 assessment did not establish that every AIKT proposal had been implemented. It sharpened the security implications of the partner the agency had chosen to pursue.
The correspondence, agreements, training records, funding, and participants must establish the relationship’s actual extent.
The responsibility for the initial decision is already visible. Višnjić’s agency confirmed that it intended to cooperate with Zvinchuk.
Credentials do not erase responsibility
Višnjić’s career cannot be reduced to a single contract or a single accusation.
It moves through institutions that control sensitive information, allocate public money, and confer political legitimacy.
The 2011 report raised questions about interception access and political protection. The 2017 complaint prompted prosecutorial checks into equipment and investigative material. The 2020 investigation placed him in a company participating in a publicly financed pharmaceutical venture.
His later agency pursued a major advertising tender, confirmed plans for Rybar cooperation, and became the reported source of a sanctions-workaround questionnaire that it disowned.
He publicly defended the ELINC architecture while describing independent oversight as something still under consideration.
These records do not establish one centrally managed conspiracy or a personal payment encompassing every sum. They establish separate decisions and connections requiring separate investigations.
They also establish political responsibility.
Technical expertise does not excuse weak safeguards. International commendations do not justify future partnerships. A director’s proximity to the ruling leadership does not relieve him of the duty to explain his decisions.
Nor does a resignation relieve the government of its responsibility to account for contracts, foreign cooperation, and institutional communications.
The officials involved must answer in documents: signed decisions, authenticated records, financial statements, technical audits, and prosecutorial dispositions.
That obligation extends from Banja Luka and Sarajevo to Washington and the capitals of Europe.
The questions the authorities must answer
To the authorities of Republika Srpska and Bosnia and Herzegovina
Who approved the ELINC agreement, who signed it, and who authorized its financing?
Publish the contract, amendments, procurement basis, payment schedule, supplier ownership information, and the security assessments used to select the vendor. Identify any narrowly justified security redactions rather than treating the entire purchase as beyond public scrutiny.
What exactly has been purchased, installed, accepted, and paid for? Which promised components remain undelivered?
Which law authorizes each category of collection, retention, filtering, and access? Who holds administrative privileges at the 15 proposed locations? What access belongs to foreign suppliers or the support operation in Serbia?
Who, outside the chain of officials and contractors that procured the system, has authority to inspect it, stop unlawful activity, and impose consequences?
Has an independent technical body examined the actual configuration? If so, publish its findings and limitations. If not, why did the government commit BAM 57 million before establishing that review?
On the advertising tender, who approved the procurement-plan amendment? Why did it appear just 12 minutes before the notice? Who justified the three-city studio requirement, five crews, five editing units, and drone?
Who submitted bids? Who won? What was paid? Where are the delivered materials and the evaluation of their public value?
On the pharmaceutical investment, identify the patent rights purchased, the independent valuation, the research milestones, and every authorized disbursement. What did the public obtain for the BAM 6 million commitment? Which deliverables exist beyond contractual promises?
Release the final disposition of the 2017 checks concerning “Port Royal.” What happened to the equipment and court-authorized material identified in the complaint? Who authorized any transfer to foreign personnel and the foreign travel under examination?
On Rybar, publish the correspondence, proposed and executed agreements, legal reviews, participating faculties, training activities, and funding. What security assessment justified offering an institutional partnership to Zvinchuk?
On the sanctions questionnaire, identify the sender through authenticated records. Was the official account used legitimately, misused internally, compromised, or impersonated? Which findings support the answer?
What action followed against anyone responsible?
And what became of Višnjić’s resignation? Which officials continued to entrust him with authority after the foreign-cooperation disclosures, and what review justified that decision?
Why did the government’s November 2025 account leave his position unresolved rather than provide a clear explanation of the agency’s conduct?
Who accepted responsibility for opening these institutional doors?
To the United States government: State Department, FBI, and Justice Department
What vetting preceded the FBI director’s 2016 commendations, and what review followed the 2017 prosecutorial checks?
The award recognized cooperation. It also conferred prestige on an official who later entered Dodik’s advisory structure and defended an agency project combining Chinese technology with Russian control practices.
How did that professional trajectory develop without an adequate public accounting of the earlier questions?
For the FBI and Justice Department, did American personnel receive any investigative material identified in the 2017 complaint? If so, what legal authority governed its transfer? Who maintained the chain of custody? What obligations existed toward the courts that authorized collection?
What equipment did the United States provide, under which agreements, and with what controls over its subsequent use?
Preserve the records and provide a public account of the legal framework without exposing protected investigative information.
For the State Department, how has Treasury’s 2022 description of Dodik’s corrupt patronage and media-control network informed scrutiny of subsequent public technology and advertising projects?
What supplier-risk and sanctions review has examined ELINC and its reported parent, China Electronics Corporation? Which specific American restrictions apply to the relevant companies, financing, or transactions?
Who has assessed the proposed Russian security practices and AIKT’s confirmed plans for Rybar cooperation?
Has the August 2025 questionnaire prompted examination of financial intermediaries, ownership structures, or transactions with a U.S. jurisdictional connection?
The question is not whether an old commendation can predict every future decision. It is whether American agencies reassess former operational partners when later records reveal serious security and accountability concerns.
How did an FBI-recognized cybercrime chief become the public defender of this Chinese and Russian technology arrangement?
What does the U.S. government know about that progression, what has it investigated, and what action has followed?
To the European Union and EU member states
Detektor reported an EU warning about the Rybar cooperation in 2024. What followed that warning?
State the legal status of Zvinchuk and Rybar, the relevant designation dates, the applicable prohibitions, and the jurisdictions responsible for enforcement.
Which authorities examined AIKT’s confirmed plan to cooperate? What records did they request? What conclusions did they reach?
Why has an institutional relationship with a Russian influence leader reported as sanctioned been permitted to advance without a clear public account of the European response?
Bosnia and Herzegovina’s location outside the Union does not place every related financial or commercial transaction outside European jurisdiction. European authorities control their own banks, companies, customs enforcement, and sanctions obligations.
What scrutiny has been applied to the channels identified in the August 2025 questionnaire?
Which agencies examined proposed routes through Serbia, Turkey, and EU territory? Which financial intelligence units assessed the references to alternative banks, cryptocurrency, and stablecoin payments?
Were requests for assistance sent to authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and neighboring countries? Were beneficial owners and intermediaries checked for prohibited activity?
Report the enforcement outcomes. Do not substitute another general declaration about European security.
What have member-state security services done with the threat described in Alto Intelligence’s assessment of Rybar? How are they distinguishing lawful expression from coordinated foreign influence activity requiring sanctions or security intervention?
What conditions govern European support for public digital institutions that pursue such partnerships? What independent safeguards protect journalists, civil society organizations, and citizens whose information enters the proposed systems?
The Western Balkans cannot be treated as a peripheral concern when the financial channels, influence operations, and infrastructure under examination sit directly beside the Union.
Which lawful, targeted measures will prevent prohibited transactions and sanctioned influence operators from exploiting those institutional openings?
Who is responsible for carrying them out?
And by what date will the public see the results?