The US is right, corruption is killing BiH, but it cannot be resolved by the leaders who produce it

By E. Metaj

Member of the BiH Presidency Milorad Dodik always says he is honest because there are no convictions against him. There were about 30 reports, some were rejected, some are still in prosecutorial drawers. Dragan Čović, president of the HDZ, who was tried but the prosecution failed, is also honest. These two today want to divide BiH together. So far, they have been doing well because, on the other hand, among those who decide, and who are supposed to defend BiH, there are quite a few who are on trial or have been reported for corruption. Former SDA Vice-President Asim Sarajlić, who is a state delegate, is on trial, and former SDA Vice-President, and now PDA leader Mirsad Kukić, has been unconvincingly sentenced to one year in the same case for which Sarajlić is being tried. 

FBiH Prime Minister Fadil Novalić and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Jelka Milićević are on trial. When they are not in the courtroom, these two shape the policy of the FBiH government. The list of politicians against whom indictments have been filed, or against whom reports have been filed in BiH, is long, and only a few are held accountable.

Croatia, just four months after the establishment of the European Public Prosecutor's Office, felt what it means when an independent body deals with corruption. Former minister Gabrijela Žalac, director of the Central Agency for Financing and Contracting of EU Funds Tomislav Petric, and two entrepreneurs, Marko Jukić and Mladen Šimunc, were arrested on suspicion of misusing EU funds on the orders of the European Public Prosecutor. Their arrest could reveal why current policies in BiH are not implementing reforms that would bring our country closer to EU membership.

The European Public Prosecutor's Office was established because past practice has shown that national judiciaries have not been effective in combating corruption and the misuse of European funds. According to all assessments, especially those of international institutions, the judiciary in our country has failed in the fight against corruption. Thus, one of the OSCE reports bears the title 'impunity syndrome'.

-    The overall picture presented by the monitoring of serious corruption cases (i.e., those cases categorized as high and medium-level corruption cases) can be simply described as the failure of the criminal justice system, which has led to de facto impunity for perpetrators of numerous serious offenses, according to the third annual report on the judiciary's response to corruption.

Along with the drop in indictments, the number of convictions has also fallen, and it takes the judiciary less than three years to conclude a case only in rare situations. In the case of the politicians mentioned at the beginning, this is enough not to endanger their mandates. The court was only swift in the case of Duško Radun, former mayor of Grahovo municipality and delegate in the House of Peoples of FBiH. He was sentenced to eight months in prison for non-transparent support to local sports organizations, enough to revoke his mandate, although he commuted the sentence to a fine. At that moment, it was important for SNSD and HDZ that Radun was not in the House of Peoples of FBiH, and the next person who entered instead of him immediately sided with the SNSD ranks.

We believe that representatives of the international community are aware of this, so it is somewhat surprising that they still count on the current authorities to be able and willing to deal with corruption. The European Public Prosecutor's Office has no jurisdiction in BiH, and the domestic judiciary, burdened by suspicions of strong political influence over it, has not yet shown serious intentions to prove otherwise, apart from dismissals within its own ranks. They improve their statistics on the poor, whom they send to prison for, for example, cutting a few meters of wood in the forest. On the other hand, the Pandora case is a picture of the BiH judiciary. After seven years, a crime worth 2 billion marks has been reduced to 1.7 million.

Therefore, it is only realistic that the US and the EU finally initiate a mechanism of sanctions against many politicians, not just Milorad Dodik. He is indeed the main culprit for the most severe crisis in BiH since the end of the war, but objectively, he would not have gotten far if he didn't have "brothers in corruption" on various sides. If there are no sanctions, then a new conflict is a realistic option. With war, criminal offenses also disappear.