According to the Global Index of Organized Crime, BiH ranks fifth in Europe. We are also threatened with inclusion on the gray list of Moneyval, which would further weaken BiH economy and thinned the citizens’ wallets.
Putting BiH on the list of non-cooperative countries would lead to further tightening of the criteria for transactions with our country. This is not the first threat. We were practically facing sanctions in certain periods, and always at the last minute, efforts were made to make changes to the legal framework, at least cosmetically.
“At one time, laws against the financing of terrorism and the like were adopted in this way, changes, but now we have come to that situation again, without the recommendations from the previous period being fulfilled, especially in terms of the transparency of financial operations and flows,” says Ivana Korajlić, executive director Transparency International BiH.
The citizens of BiH, impoverished by the consequences of the pandemic, inflation and war in Europe, would suffer the greatest consequences. While political parties do not declare their sources of finance because there is an open possibility of doing business and receiving donations in cash, laws that would prevent this are not adopted.
“In the first wave, it would damage exporters, also importers, but also ordinary citizens, businessmen who carry out these transactions in the context of increasing transaction costs, loss of time and some other costs that follow the above. The biggest responsibility for possibly putting BiH on the Moneyvala gray list is at the state level,” says Admir Čavalić, representative of the SBiH in the FBiH Parliament.
In the RS, there is a legal framework for examining the origin of property, but it is not applied at all or selectively. There are little prospects for the adoption of the Law on Prevention of Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorist Activities at the state level.
“As for future processes, we cannot be optimistic because we had certain blockages in the last convocation of the Council of Ministers, especially since this convocation of the Council of Ministers shows absolutely no interest in this very important issue for BiH, for the economy of BiH, for the international reputation of BiH. And for this reason, there is a really high probability that when assessing the status of BiH before Moneyval, it will be, unfortunately, negative”, warns Nezir Pivić, SDA’s representative in the FBiH Parliament.
The Associations of Employers and Banks are optimistic that we will not be on the gray list, because the European Union is our important trade partner.
“We still have a very bad structure of foreign direct investments, and in that segment it would be very bad if we were to end up on the Moneyvala blacklist, so basically we believe that the institutions of BiH will do everything to prevent that from happening,” says Saša Aćić , president of the Association of Employers of the RS.
First, it is a bad thing for the state to be on any blacklist, notes Berislav Kutle, director of the Association of Banks of BiH: “We are, due to political instability, due to this situation that has been prevailing in BiH for years, on almost all of these blacklists and almost that we have learned to live in such a way. Everything that the political structures promise by carrying out the so-called the famous 14 rules for entering the EU is a story in itself, and in reality nothing happens”.
Individuals on black lists, who often end up in positions, threaten the rating of BiH on an international scale. Moneyval’s graylisting would further cost the country stability and future investment that we desperately need.
