Branko Perić: Political Outlaws and Judicial Uskoks!

By: Branko Perić/istraga.ba

In folk epic poetry, hajduks are runaway and self-organized highway robbers who intercept and rob caravans of conquerors and merchants on forest roads. In times of various oppressions and injustices, and in the absence of government and law, folk singers proclaimed their outlaws as fighters for freedom. In the title of this story, the author has taken poetic license to give our “political outlaws” an expanded meaning of those who have run away from the law and are plundering their own people. In modern European judicial terminology, USKOK is an abbreviation for the “Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organized Crime”. Unlike medieval (mostly Dalmatian) uskoks, the “judicial uskoks” in our story are members of a state judicial formation whose role is to “snatch” illegally acquired property benefits gained through corruption and organized crime from political outlawry. Society has progressed, and the roles of the main actors in the plunder have changed a bit! Let's see if the “judicial uskoks” will take away from the political outlaws?

Milorad Dodik's USKOK

Twenty years ago, during the big talk about an independent judiciary and its reform, the then Prime Minister of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, was the first to come up with the idea of establishing USKOK as a completely independent judicial body. Endowed with political talent and quick political reflexes, he realized that he could easily corrupt a small group of “independent” prosecutors and thus use them for his own and political goals. He went too far in his intentions, appointing them himself, ignoring the legal powers of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC). The conflict with the HJPC and international judicial reformers quickly ended with a political deal – he got a Special Prosecutor's Office for Corruption and Organized Crime, but the prosecutors were appointed by the HJPC! The institution received a special building, a special budget, and a special administrative structure. Special prosecutors also received a special bonus in the form of a salary increased by 30 percent compared to the salary of regular prosecutors.

Naïve people, like the author of these lines, believed that the government genuinely wanted effective prevention of corruption and organized crime, following the example of some European countries, and that the increased salary justified the complexity of prosecutorial corruption investigations. The institution's development path soon revealed the true intentions of the project's originator. The Special Prosecutor's Office did not produce the expected results. There were no high-profile corruption and organized crime cases. What was being worked on were neither serious nor complex cases. The Special Prosecutor's Office did not touch the hotbeds of corruption and state crime. In the twenty years of Dodik's USKOK's operation, “Bobar banka” and “Banka Republike Srpske” collapsed, Dodik bought a villa in Dedinje, Lithuanians robbed the aluminum plant in Zvornik, Serdarov disappeared from Ugljevik, and several unsolved murders with the mark of organized crime occurred (Milan Vukelić, Slaviša Krunić, and David Dragičević)… Various fraudsters, fake businessmen, and international scoundrels paraded through RS with whom Dodik held talks about investments and made failed business arrangements. There were fraudulent cases that any serious person would be ashamed of. For example, the Vietnamese fraudster Mai Vu Minh and the German businessman, and our own man, Dragan Vučetić. It was funny and sad to watch Dodik and Željka Cvijanović in the company of these world-class fraudsters. It would be useful for the reader to recall that time, those people, and our patriotic immortal leaders with the help of an internet search engine and see how they led us into a bright future.

Federal USKOK

In the Federation of BiH, there was silence about Dodik's USKOK. No one challenged it, nor praised it. At one point, in the political circles of Zlatko Lagumžija's SDP and his political associates at the time, the idea of judicial reform emerged, directed by the domestic authorities, which, among other innovations, planned for judges and prosecutors to be appointed by the legislative authority (Parliaments). This was an obvious plan by the ruling politics to gain a proven mechanism of influence over the judiciary through elections and appointments. However, that revealed plan disappeared as quickly as it became public. It was, by all accounts, stopped by foreigners because it interfered with their judicial projects and political goals.

After that SDP political debacle, in the Federation, in the same kitchen, the idea of a federal USKOK emerged. This was about ten years ago. The law was passed in 2014, but it was not applied for more than ten years. No one minded that such an important law was not being applied! Neither the American Embassy, nor the EC office, nor our opposition parties minded. Why? Because the ruling politics and foreigners already had levers of influence secured in the prosecutorial part of the judiciary. When the reformed judicial system began to turn into a system of corruption, influence peddling, incomprehensible scandals, and obvious undermining, it was necessary to show that someone still cared about “BiH's progress towards European integration”.

The American Embassy assessed that the time had come to make an agreement with the ruling coalition, which it had already installed, about USKOK in order to preserve the acquired power with the help of criminalizing political opponents. Thus, eleven years after the adoption of the USKOK Law, a competition was announced for the selection and appointment of prosecutors. With the alignment of the interests of the American Embassy with the ruling coalition in FBiH, SDP finally realized its idea of direct influence on the prosecutorial part of the judicial system.

Selection of USKOK Prosecutors and Judges

It goes without saying that such a judicial body should concentrate the very best of prosecutorial intellect and experience. The independent regulator, as the body managing the judiciary and conducting the selection, had to conduct the selection process in such a way that USKOK would include prosecutors from all over FBiH who have relevant experience in prosecuting corruption and organized crime. In the selection of prosecutors for the special department in the Prosecutor's Office of FBiH, we had a strange and incomprehensible situation. Among the eight selected prosecutors, all are prosecutors from the Cantonal Prosecutor's Office in Sarajevo! It irresistibly resembles a political project of the ruling coalition! But, let's leave that for another story. One Cantonal Prosecutor's Office was left without eight prosecutors and can be said to have been destroyed in its strongest and most important part.

The consequences of such personnel devastation will be long-term and catastrophic. The HJPC carried out an irresponsible and suicidal attack on an important judicial institution. Seven judges were selected for the USKOK department of the Supreme Court, including four prosecutors. One of them was not accepted as a good candidate for prosecutor in USKOK, but for some reason is a good candidate for Supreme Court judge! Only those who chose him know why. Of the four selected judges, three prosecutors are from the Prosecutor's Office of BiH. Of the seven selected, six are from Sarajevo. Only those who chose them know why USKOK is in the hands of Sarajevo prosecutors and judges! Did political Sarajevo choose its USKOK!?

The transfer of prosecutors to courts is becoming a structural problem. The judicial system is being filled with prosecutors year after year, but no judge has ever moved to the prosecutor's office. With this appointment policy, the HJPC is destroying both the prosecutorial and judicial systems. Prosecutorial knowledge and practice are not the same as judicial knowledge and practice, regardless of how much they overlap. The consistency of judicial practice and the quality of the judicial system are built on the continuity of experience. The trend of diluting the judicial system with prosecutorial experience and work philosophies carries a serious risk.

This phenomenon requires urgent analysis. Regarding the individuals selected for USKOK, there are stories circulating in the professional community that those who have never worked on organized crime and corruption cases were selected, that the selection did not follow the list of the best candidates, that those who were in 14th and 20th place on the list were selected, and that some do not have a single final conviction for corruption and organized crime. Among the selected judges is one judge from a municipal court and one prosecutor who was not a good enough candidate for prosecutor but was chosen as a good candidate for judge.

Absurdity upon absurdity! It is interesting and highly indicative that the selection process for the “best candidates” was supervised by representatives of the US Embassy, the EC Office, and some say, a representative of USKOK from Croatia. The American Embassy openly interfered in the process, first with a request to postpone the HJPC session, and then with a public statement supporting the decision not to proceed with the selection due to the “lack of good candidates” and to announce a new competition. What is the role of the US Embassy in the selection of holders of judicial power in BiH? Is it support for the independence of BiH's judiciary? Is the HJPC the regulator of judicial independence, or a tool in the hands of embassies?

A Project of Ruling Politics

From this chronology of wrangling, delays in the execution of the law, and the momentum at which USKOK is being revived, as well as the method of selecting prosecutors and judges, it is clear that the federal USKOK is a project of ruling politics. It is a decisive step towards complete political control of the judicial system. The practice so far of gaining and maintaining power through the judiciary has encouraged both ruling politics and foreigners. The ruling coalition, following Milorad Dodik's experience, concluded that by installing its own prosecutorial staff, it could more easily influence USKOK and use it for party showdowns, as it has been doing for some time.

In other words, it realized that modeling power through electoral engineering and coalition maneuvering was too complicated and insufficient for a secure and long-term stay in power. Therefore, we will again see prosecutions of petty corruption from the last political echelon, while public procurement, dubious investments, highways, airports, power plants, casinos, flows of extortion and dirty money, construction investments on Jahorina, Bjelašnica, and Igman, and everything else that involves extortion and kickbacks, will remain untouched. And it is not impossible that this hastily assembled and painfully born judicial monstrosity will die before it learns to walk!

(Branko Perić is the former president of the HJPC and former judge of the Court of BiH)