Bečarević: City of Sarajevo introduces regulations characteristic of North Korea, that's the transparency of the 'Trojka'

(Patria) - President of the KV Party of BiH Almir Bečarević reacted to the Rulebook on the protection of business, official and professional data of the City of Sarajevo, adopted by the Mayor of Sarajevo Samir Avdić.

Bečarević states that the City of Zagreb has launched a web application that allows for a completely transparent insight into the spending of the City of Zagreb's budget. Through the application, the public can view all bank transactions of the City to legal and natural persons starting from January 1, 2024. This means that from now on, citizens and all interested parties have direct access to information about payments from the City of Zagreb's budget, which are searchable by various parameters (recipient, amount, date, OIB, description, etc.), and the data can be exported in a machine-readable format.

He cites the example that on August 21, 2025, the Mayor of the City of Sarajevo adopted the Rulebook on the protection of business, official and professional data of the City of Sarajevo. Article 5, paragraph (1) stipulates: "Business secrets include documents and data whose disclosure to an unauthorized person would harm the interests and reputation of the City of Sarajevo or the entities that submitted these documents to the City of Sarajevo, and in particular:

a) economic and other assessments of the City of Sarajevo, data from offers, as well as balance sheets of the City of Sarajevo;
b) current accounting status of the material and financial operations of the City of Sarajevo, unless otherwise expressly provided by law (findings);..."

"When they came to power, they came on the wings of the story of transparency, of a European Sarajevo, and now we have reached regulations that limit every form of transparency. The City of Zagreb is introducing transparency, while the City of Sarajevo is introducing the strictest form of restriction in communication with the public. Employees are restricted from reporting irregularities to the competent authorities, as they could harm the reputation of the City of Sarajevo, and financial documents are declared business secrets. Has anyone tried to explain to the mayor that a balance sheet is a public document, as it is an integral part of the audit report, have they tried to explain to him that public procurement data are public documents, or to specify that in the EU you now have real-time financial transactions.

The City of Sarajevo is entering the darkest form of censorship and control of all those who would conscientiously report corruption or publicly point out non-compliance with regulations. The City of Zagreb provides the opportunity to track financial transactions in real-time, while the City of Sarajevo is introducing regulations characteristic of North Korea. All that remains is for them to introduce hygienic cleaning behind the mayor," stated Bečarević.