'Foreign judges and prosecutors need to be brought back to BiH'

By Armin Aljović

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President of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of BiH Milan Tegeltija appealed to the members of the HJPC to close ranks and respond with a unified approach and work to the challenges that have been shaking the umbrella judicial institution in Bosnia and Herzegovina in recent days. After Žurnal published a recording about the involvement of Tegeltija - the head of BiH's judiciary - in a corruption affair, Tegeltija resorted to a tried and tested trick and tried to distance himself from the whole matter by calling the news article "pressure on the judiciary."

Tegeltija stated: "A constant process of discrediting members of the HJPC has become commonplace. They want to use all our democratic disagreements to sow discord. There is a political-para-intelligence group that is conducting an aggressive and intensive campaign against the HJPC, not to improve the situation in the judiciary and the fight against corruption. There are other intentions. They want to take control of the judiciary. We must not allow that."

Every time judges and prosecutors in BiH find themselves at the center of a scandal, which journalists present to the public, and this happens often, we get the answer that it is pressure on the judiciary. Although Tegeltija unequivocally claims that "there is a political-para-intelligence group that is conducting an aggressive and intensive campaign against the HJPC... in order to take control of the judiciary," it is unclear whether Tegeltija also means those political-para-intelligence groups that brought him to the head of the HJPC, despite the criminal complaint filed against him - not by Nermin Alešević, a businessman from Velika Kladuša who recently recorded Tegeltija's affinities towards abuse of official position - but by a criminal complaint filed against Tegeltija several years ago by another businessman, Dževad Haznadar. Haznadar accused Tegeltija of enabling the theft of his private property in Laktaši while he was a judge in Banja Luka. Despite this report, and the evidence presented by Haznadar, Tegeltija was appointed head of the HJPC, solely because "political-para-intelligence groups, which are conducting an aggressive and intensive campaign against the HJPC, not to improve the situation in the judiciary and the fight against corruption, but to take control of the judiciary," removed Haznadar's report while Tegeltija secured the top position in the HJPC.

There is not a single credible domestic or international institution in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the world that does not notice the most direct influence of politics on the judiciary in BiH. Numerous reports from international organizations speak of judges, prosecutors, and police officers as political appointees instrumentalized in the judicial institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the task of protecting party officials. What, for example, did the "persecuted Serb cadre Tegeltija" do to prevent Gordana Tadić, who is in direct family ties with some of the key figures of the HDZ, from being appointed to the head of the Prosecutor's Office?

Milorad Dodik, the chairman of the Presidency of BiH, stood up in defense of Tegeltija. He stated: "There is no truth in the Tegeltija case. It is the persecution of Serb cadres. It is part of the atmosphere we can see every day in Sarajevo." Dodik, by his competencies, cannot know whether Tegeltija committed a criminal offense, so his political statements, apart from being predictable, are the grossest pressure on the judiciary. This time, Tegeltija did not call for HJPC members to "close ranks and respond with a unified approach and work to the challenges that have been shaking the umbrella judicial institution in Bosnia and Herzegovina in recent days."

Solely for this reason, and solely in this environment where prosecutors and judges in BiH have moved away from professionalism and allowed political influence on the judiciary, Dragan Čović, then Minister of Finance, now president of the HDZ, can avoid prison after enabling the theft of several million marks of state taxes. Or, solely for this reason, and solely in this environment, Kemal Čaušević, former director of the Indirect Taxation Authority of BiH, can still be at large, although the indictment against him initially stated that he enabled the theft of hundreds of millions of KM of public money. Or, solely for this reason, and solely in this environment, Ivica Ćurić, despite living prosecutors, could be appointed director at Autoceste FBiH, after his private construction company owed the state millions of KM in taxes.

This corrupt Bosnian-Herzegovinian judiciary, on which the quality of life of BiH citizens depends entirely, can only be reformed if international prosecutors and judges return to the prosecutor's offices and courts in BiH and cleanse the judicial system from top to bottom.