Special Public Prosecutor's Office of RS Refuses to Investigate Bobar Bank Case

Transparency International Bosnia and Herzegovina (TI BiH) received a letter from the District Prosecutor's Office in Bijeljina, which concludes that no action is being taken on criminal complaints filed by the RS Banking Agency against unknown persons for abuse of office and authority at Bobar Bank, despite the complaints being forwarded in December 2014, reports the Patria News Agency. 

Namely, the District Prosecutor's Office in Bijeljina informed TI BiH that all documentation had been forwarded to the RS Ministry of Interior – Directorate of Criminal Police – Unit for Combating Economic Crime, Financial Investigations, and Money Laundering, but that they have not acted upon it at all for now. We were also informed in the same letter that there are indications of organized crime in this specific case, and that the case has therefore been forwarded to the Special Public Prosecutor's Office of the Republika Srpska, which, by an act dated 13.03.2015, responded that it "cannot accept proceedings on this criminal case, due to the absence of elements of a criminal offense within the jurisdiction of that Prosecutor's Office."

The decision of the Special Public Prosecutor's Office, which has jurisdiction over organized crime and corruption, is absolutely unclear, considering that the Agency's complaint related to a large number of disputed loans signed by one person and used by another, and the disappearance of almost 10 million KM from the Bobar Bank vault. Such criminal acts cannot be considered the act of a lone individual, but rather clearly fall under organized crime.

This only confirmed TI BiH's claims that in the Bobar Bank case, there is an organized avoidance of responsibility by the competent institutions, which are now refusing to act on the filed criminal complaints, even though the District Prosecutor's Office in Bijeljina confirmed that there are indications of organized crime, which resulted in the collapse of a bank. The letter provided by the Bijeljina prosecutor's office shows the repeated practice of institutions shifting responsibility and jurisdiction to each other, which ultimately resulted in inaction.

Transparency International BiH believes that the latest finding that no competent investigative body is currently determining responsibility in the Bobar Bank case further obliges members of parliament and members of the Finance and Budget Committee of the National Assembly of the Republika Srpska to hear Slavica Injac, director of the RS Banking Agency, because otherwise, it will turn out that despite all indications of organized crime responsible for the collapse of Bobar Bank, no one has even attempted to determine responsibility in this case, it was announced from TI BiH.