DEADLINE PASSED, NO MONEY EITHER Judicial officeholders don't know when they will assume duties, HJPC without a Department for Property Verification

By Amra Vrabac

The High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC) appointed 11 judicial officeholders at yesterday's session. Two of them are Deputy Chief State Prosecutors, three are Chief Prosecutors in three cantonal prosecutor's offices, two are court presidents, and four are judges. However, the date of assuming duties has not been announced, given that the HJPC's Department for Integrity, which will verify the assets of judicial officeholders, has not yet started operating.

At a previous session in March, 16 judicial officeholders were appointed, and they are supposed to assume their duties on July 1. However, even that is questionable because no one knows when this Department will be formed. Tests are also underway for candidates who applied for positions in the so-called "Federal USKOK", a special department of the Federal Prosecutor's Office and the Supreme Court of the Federation of BiH, which is supposed to deal with combating corruption, organized, and inter-cantonal crime.

The new/old HJPC member Sanela Gorušanović Butigan also does not know if she will be able to assume her function at full capacity because she was elected for a new term when her current one expires in June.

Amendments to the Law on HJPC from December 2023 specified that the Department for Integrity should be formed by March 23, but this did not happen. The Minister of Justice of BiH, Davor Bunoza (HDZ BiH), at the session of the House of Representatives of the BiH Parliament when the deadline was extended to March 23, although the HJPC and some representatives proposed an extension of 180 days, said that he would amend the law again if this deadline was not met. The deadline has passed, and amendments to the Law on HJPC have not been sent to the parliamentary procedure to extend the deadline for forming the Department for Integrity.

An additional problem is the failure to adopt the Budget of BiH Institutions for 2024. The Department for Integrity should have 14 employees, and the HJPC does not have planned funds for these employees.

At the end of March, the President of the HJPC, Halil Lagumdžija, stated that the Council of Ministers of BiH should make a decision approving employment and providing the necessary funds. However, nothing has happened since then. Neither the proposed amendments to the Law on HJPC nor the decision on securing funds for the employment of 14 people in the Department for Integrity are on the agenda of the next session of the Council of Ministers of BiH, which will be held on Monday, April 22.

The verification of the members of the Department for Integrity is carried out by the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) and OSA, which can take several months. With this pace and sluggishness of work by both the Council of Ministers of BiH and the HJPC, judicial officeholders will not assume their duties before the end of the year. And by then, serious legal chaos could ensue. However, in the heated political situation, some structures would clearly benefit from this.

A completely new Law on HJPC should be adopted this year, and HDZ's wish is also a new structure for the HJPC. Whether this is also a reason for the delay in the entire process will be shown in the time to come.