Bosnia's economy to collapse due to FATF blacklist

The Social Democratic Party of BiH considers it scandalous that the current ruling coalition at the state level has brought our country to the blacklist of the World Organization for the Prevention of Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism (FATF), thus placing BiH alongside countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Laos, Syria, Iran, Uganda, Guyana, Vanuatu, and Yemen, Patria reports.

After Deutsche Bank recently blocked more than 500 financial transactions from our country for this reason, it is only a matter of time before investors start avoiding our country due to the increased cost of capital on the market, as well as due to future stricter control of financial flows from BiH. Due to the aforementioned blockade, practically all domestic companies doing business abroad will no longer be able to do so, which will lead to their closure and the loss of a huge number of jobs. For this reason, many representatives of foreign companies have already announced their withdrawal from the BiH market and the dismissal of their employees.

The main reason why BiH ended up on the blacklist is that the recommendations of FATF and Moneyval related to the Law on Prevention of Money Laundering have not yet been adopted by the state Parliament.

This is the third time in the last two years that BiH has been threatened with this list. We remind you that in 2014, BiH was supposed to end up on this list, but the then members of the Council of Ministers from the SDP BiH insisted that this Law be included on the agenda of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH, which, despite fierce opposition from MPs from Republika Srpska, was nevertheless adopted.

However, the Criminal Code of BiH also needed to be harmonized with this Law, which has not been done so far. Precisely because of the incompetence of the officials of the ruling coalition at the state level, BiH is today on the blacklist, which is already causing enormous damage to the BiH economy.

This once again confirms the fact that every day the coalition, consisting of SDA/SBB, HDZ, and the Alliance for Changes, spends in power causes irreparable damage to BiH. Their silence on such a serious problem proves their incompetence and the truth that their intention was never to work for the benefit of the state and citizens, but exclusively for their own personal gain.