POSKOK ACTIVATED: Regime's diplomatic viper for incriminating the disloyal, disguised as a fighter for the rule of law!

By: Rasim Belko @rasimbelko

They started working on the last day of April, and from tomorrow they will be officially open for the prosecution of all forms of crime in the entity of Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The dangerously poisonous POSKOK (Special Department for Combating Crime and Corruption) is announced as the fear and terror for all on the other side of the law.

However, in essence, it will be another judicial fraud in a series of deceptions that the citizens of the Federation of BiH are already accustomed to, although this time the directors are somewhat forgotten, and the announcements are pompous and at a level corresponding to the FBI level.

As early as 2014, the Government under the leadership of Nermin Nikšić, who is still the current Prime Minister of FBiH, passed the Law on Combating Corruption and Organized Crime in FBiH. It was the first step towards creating another in a series of parallel institutions in our country's judicial system, which was conceived, supported, and most pushed for its launch by the US Embassy in BiH.

However, even the Americans could not or did not want to speed up the POSKOK story, which is finally starting to work these days.

And the fact that the Americans are the key godfathers of our POSKOK is shown by the meeting in September last year, where the working group for launching that department met with representatives of the US Embassy to define the next steps. Thus, Murphy's people dictated the Government and Parliament, the conditions, and the ways in which things would be arranged in POSKOK.

And when such people dictate in Bosnia and Herzegovina, parallel institutions are created, so in the future, we will have the FBiH Prosecutor's Office, which will continue the continuity of work and turn a blind eye to high and all other corruption and crime, while POSKOK will, with high certainty we can claim this, epochally and dramatically prosecute targets.

Because, according to the Law by which POSKOK was established, its jurisdiction is identical to that of the FBiH Prosecutor's Office, established by the Law on the FBiH Prosecutor's Office.

Therefore, according to Article 16 of the Law from 2003, when the Law was adopted, the FBiH Prosecutor's Office has the following jurisdiction:

“(1) The Federal Prosecutor's Office conducts investigative actions and prosecutes potential perpetrators of criminal offenses and economic offenses, and performs other tasks determined by federal law.

(2) The Federal Prosecutor's Office has first-instance jurisdiction for conducting investigative actions and prosecuting potential perpetrators of criminal offenses of terrorism, inter-cantonal crime, illicit drug trafficking, or organized crime, in accordance with the Law on the Supreme Court of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina”.

From tomorrow, May 6, POSKOK will bring a breath of rule of law into our lawless system with the same jurisdiction.

Yeah, right!

If the FBiH Prosecutor's Office had acted according to its jurisdiction and obligations in this entity, several more prisons would have had to be built in the past 22 years. But they weren't, because few can remember indictments from that Prosecutor's Office for high corruption, crime, or what they call inter-cantonal crime. So, inaction was tolerated for two decades, only to then form a department whose direct superior will be the head of the FBiH Prosecutor's Office, and now they are selling us that they will correct all the wrongs of the past years.

THEY WON'T! And that is clear to anyone even superficially informed. Just as the parallel system of anti-corruption offices in the cantons has not eradicated crime and corruption, but has mostly served for the settling of scores between those in power and the opposition and the like, so POSKOK will serve for sliding tackles against politically unsuitable individuals in this and especially in the next year.

Because parallel systems within the justice system serve only that purpose. And POSKOK is exactly that, a parallel system to the father figure called the FBiH Prosecutor's Office. With an identical scope of jurisdiction and predictably acting, it will be directed at three cantons with a Bosniak majority and two with a Croat majority. The rest will be politically protected territory, where federal prosecutors and cantonal anti-corruption fighters have not been doing their job even until now.

And finally, I don't know if it's propaganda or unconscious, but POSKOK has become USKOK in the public eye. I'm more inclined to believe that it's another good marketing plan by the real creators of POSKOK because USKOK in the Republic of Croatia broke Sanader and some other big fish, so the comparison serves them well for promotion.

But, USKOK is a state agency of the Republic of Croatia, and POSKOK is an entity one.

If someone truly wanted Bosnia and Herzegovina to try to deal with high corruption, crime that knows no borders, POSKOK should have been a department of the State Prosecutor's Office with expanded powers.

Only then, with a serious approach to the selection of prosecutors for that department, could we have obtained an body that is ready to deal with corruption throughout the country. Because, considering the initial and parallel bodies in the Federation, it seems as if that entity is absolutely corrupt, and the other is equally clean of corruption and crime.

And the truth is quite the opposite – crime and corruption in this country know no entity, cantonal, or ethnic borders. That is why POSKOK will remain just another decoration in the heavy institutional darkness, intended to discipline political opponents, not to establish the rule of law.