'Petar Kovačević's Tipped Diploma'

By Amina Čorbo-Zećo

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The Personal Data Protection Agency of BiH did not support the verification of diplomas of employees in the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was an initiative by Kenan Vehabović, secretary of the Joint Service of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The media previously published evidence of numerous fake diplomas in Bosnia and Herzegovina that can be bought from private schools, mostly in the area of West Herzegovina, which shook not only Bosnia and Herzegovina but also neighboring Croatia.

From the Personal Data Protection Agency, headed by Petar Kovačević, they claim that a collective verification of diplomas is inadmissible, meaning that for mass diploma verification, there must first be founded suspicions?!

The Patria Agency was shown the university diploma of the Director of the Personal Data Protection Agency of BiH, Petar Kovačević, for inspection. Kovačević graduated on October 24, 1995, from the Faculty of Law in then-Serbian Sarajevo, at a time when war was still raging across Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Faculty of Law of the University of Sarajevo was founded by the Law on the Faculty of Law, adopted by the National Assembly of the People's Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina on August 20, 1946. It was the first faculty in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which three years later, after the founding of the University of Sarajevo, became part of it. At the beginning of the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1992, a significant number of teachers and associates of the Faculty of Law in Sarajevo left the city, and thus the institution where they had worked until then. Some teachers left the country, while others continued their lives and work in the then-Republic of Srpska, which would only gain international recognition as one of the two entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the end of 1995, with the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement. Some teachers who left the Faculty of Law in Sarajevo continued their teaching and scientific work at the Faculty of Law in the municipality of Ilidža, which was under the control of the authorities and army of the Republic of Srpska during the war. The Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of the Republic of Srpska gave consent for the operation of that Faculty of Law in Ilidža on November 30, 1994. Prof. Dr. Bogdan Loza was appointed acting dean. One of the first students of that faculty was Petar Kovačević, the current director of the Personal Data Protection Agency of BiH, and Professor Loza himself signed his diploma.

"I finished my studies on 24.10.1995, taking my last exam with Prof. Dr. Bogdan Lozo. I studied while working at the Faculty of Law in Sarajevo before the war," Kovačević told Patria in response to a question about the validity of his diploma.

The Faculty of Law of the University of Sarajevo, in accordance with the Law on Free Access to Information, also showed Patria the student registry for Petar Kovačević for inspection.

"Petar Kovačević completed his studies for higher vocational education on January 23, 1987, and obtained the professional title of lawyer. The aforementioned enrolled in the Faculty of Law studies in the academic year 1980/81. He had his last student status in the academic year 1990/91. By the end of his studies, the aforementioned had four more subjects from the fourth year of study."

It remains unclear how Kovačević managed to transfer his grades from the Faculty of Law in Sarajevo to the newly founded Faculty in Ilidža from besieged Sarajevo?