Bosnian Prosecution Nets Small Fish in Corruption Cases

Analysis by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network Bosnia and Herzegovina indicates that, out of a total of 139 people tried for corrupt activities before the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina since it started work 10 years ago, 116 have either been acquitted, given suspended sentences or fined.

As far as the 23 remaining are concerned, more than a half of them have been sentenced to less than a year in prison, which means they could pay a fine instead of serving their jail term.

Only two convicts who were originally charged with corrupt activities have been sentenced to more than five years in prison.

So far this year, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina has handed down four first-instance verdicts for corrupt activities. All of them were acquittals.

Experts and most lawyers involved in cases heard before the Bosnian state court and experts say that these numbers indicate that the state prosecution is dealing with small-scale corrupt activities, as a result of political pressure and ignorance. The prosecution denies such allegations.

Watchdog organisation Transparency International says that corruption has become a standard for the authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and that, accordingly, the country ranked 76 out of 168 countries in the world on its Corruption Perceptions Index this year.

Bosnia and Herzegovina dropped one position in comparison to the year before, but its level of corruption is higher than in Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro.

Transparency International suggests that there have been very few examples of major corruption cases and those cases have mostly ended in acquittals or referrals to lower-level courts.

Ivanic, Covic, Bicakcic

Over the course of 10 years, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina has acquitted 38 individuals accused of corrupt activities. One of the best-known verdicts was handed down in the case against Mladen Ivanic, former member of the Bosnian state presidency, who was acquitted of charges of “professional negligence in relation to timber theft”.

After having been filed, a number of indictments for corrupt activities were transferred to entity prosecutor’s offices. The cases against Dragan Covic and Edhem Bicakcic, who were charged with unlawful budgetary spending for buying and renovating apartments, and former president Zivko Budimir, who was charged with the abuse of power in amnesty procedures, were transferred to the Cantonal Court in Sarajevo.

Lawyers Ismet Mehic and Milica Kapisoda-Cvijanovic, who were involved in Ivanic’s case, bellieve that the prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina is dealing with small-scale corruption cases.

“No corruption is seen in those activities. What I saw in those cases was nothing else but persecution of individuals on someone’s order,” Kapisoda-Cvijanovic said.

“Both small and big corruption cases have evidence, but they do not deal with corrupt activities that destroy society. If you want to deal with that type of corruption, you would have to step on a spider’s web. A chain of people is involved in such corrupt activity. However, you see one person accused, but what about the others? You cannot perform such activities alone,” she added.

Mehic agreed, saying that the cases in which politicians are accused are doomed to fail in advance.

“Prosecutors rarely dig deeper in sensitive cases, which deal with politicians involved in corrupt behaviour and criminal acts of that kind,” he said.

Boris Grubesic, the spokesperson for the state prosecution, denied these allegations, insisting that the state prosecution is conducting investigations and has filed indictments against a number of senior officials.

“We have filed an indictment against a judge in the appeals section of the Bosnian state court. We referred the cases against officials from the level of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who were recorded, during our operations, accepting a bribe or gaining illegal material profit, to the entity prosecutor’s offices, which, in no way can be considered ‘small corruption cases’,” Grubesic said.

The longest sentence – ten years – for misuse of public funds has been was handed down in the case against Nedzad Bajraktarevic, who was convicted of the unlawful appropriation of money with which he was entrusted in order to carry out his job, amounting to 600,000 Bosnian marks in total.

He is one of the two people who have been sentenced to more than five years for such crimes.

The prosecution says that convictions have been handed down in around 89 per cent of cases in which they have filed indictments for organised crime and corruption, which, in its opinion, points to the good quality of its indictments.

When asked why the majority of the convictions result in suspended sentences, Grubesic said “the issue of penalty policy and the severity of sentences is under the responsibility of the court, because it is the court that pronounces the sentences”. The state court said that it does not want to comment on verdicts and indictments, advising us to ask “the prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina why it files indictments for ‘small’ corrupt activities”.

Josip Muselimovic, one of Dragan Covic’s defence lawyers, said he believes that the biggest scandals are still far from reaching the judicial system.

“The results of [the judiciary’s] work indicates that we cannot be satisfied, and that those responsible should pay more attention when selecting individuals to perform such responsible social and judicial functions,” Muselimovic said.

Former judge Mirko Dabic, who now works as a lawyer, said he does not see a problem in the fact that the majority of cases have ended in acquittals or suspended sentences.

“A problem would arise if it was proved that a prosecutor had abused his authority, but I do not know of such cases,” Dabic said, adding that any case dealing with corrupt activities, no matter what its outcome is, serves as a preventative measure.

Lack of education and supervision

Srdjan Blagovcanin of Transparency International said that that there has been few “political cases of major corruption” and that most cases have ended in acquittal or the referral of the cases to lower judicial levels.

“There is a problem of prosecutors’ discretion, because prosecutor’s offices, according to some of our findings, have an unlimited level of discretion. There is no mechanism to be applied in case the prosecution wants or does not want to work on a case,” Blagovcanin argued.

“There is no way to narrow this type of discretion through a second instance or some other type of supervision or some type of direction, rulebook or instruction. This is where we see the biggest problem – the problem of unlimited prosecutorial discretion,” he added.

Defence lawyer Muselimovic also said he believes it is necessary to ensure better control over investigations.

“The defence has no influence on the course of investigative process. The investigation is then completed, an indictment filed and confirmed and then, practically, when the time for the main trial comes, it practically becomes the investigation phase,” he said.

“In my opinion, things were done in a much better way before, because the defence had the possibility of controlling the work of the prosecution, to control evidence,” he added.
Mehic argued meanwhile that the main reason for the Bosnian state prosecution’s “average performance”, as he assessed it, is unskilled personnel.

“This is particularly important in the field of corruption. If a prosecutor is unskilled and not ready, no good results can be expected,” Mehic said.

He added that employing an experienced team of prosecutors, judges and even police, who were paid enough and whose work was supervised, would be the only solution to this problem.

Muselimovic also said the fight against corruption requires top-quality legal education and a focus on specific legal fields.

Kapisoda-Cvijanovic concluded meanwhile that cases should not be brought if they could not be won.

She said it was “better not to accuse a person at all, than accuse them and then acquit them of the charges, because this only stimulates corruption”.