The Center for Investigative Journalism (CIN) today unveiled a database on assets of BiH politicians.
This single database, on which CIN journalists worked for nine months contains information on the political and professional careers, real estate, savings, vehicles, stocks, loans and court proceedings of 160 parliamentarians, ministers and other elected officials.
“CIN journalists collected more than 2,700 documents that include all the property records from previous and this election year, the land registry statements, judgments, charges and other official documents,” said at the press conference CIN journalist Aladin Abdagić.
As Abdagić said, out of 160 politicians in the database, nearly a hundred o them are candidates in the October elections.
“51 of them have written that they have savings and this amount exceeds five million BAM. At least in the case of half of them, their savings grew steadily, and several of them entered politics without any property, and in ten to 12 years of doing politics they gained three, or four flats, expensive cars, and savings exceeding 100,000 BAM,” said Abdagić.
He added that CIN journalists found that in our institutions at all levels we have people that have been charged with fraud, violence or abuse.
What is interesting, said Abdagić, is that when one compares the data from this database with data from four years ago, we note the growth in salaries of officials, especially those of state parliamentarians.
He added that politicians conceal assets in filling property records but that unfortunately there is no law which prescribes sanctions if they do not do so.
At the conference CIN announced that it will soon include in the database the information about which politicians have used or are using the so-called “white bread” privilege, meaning that they receive a salary even after the expiration of their mandate, virtually “for doing nothing.”
“Many institutions have responded to our inquiries within the statutory period and have provided complete information. However, with some of them we had big problems because we had to insist on for months to get the responses, and some have refused to provide information altogether,” said CIN journalist Mirjana Popović.
CIN journalists therefore inspected the property records of politicians, copied the data into the forms, excluding all the personal information, and put them in the database.
“CIN shall in the coming period publish several stories about politicians who have gained enviable asset by doing politics. In addition, we will regularly update the database and refresh it with new information and documents,” said Editor in Chief of CIN Renata Radić – Dragić.
It was pointed out that access to information about the assets of politicians has been made difficult when the Central Election Commission (CEC), due to the judgment of the BIH Court on Protection of Personal Data from 2012 removed the property records of BiH politicians from its website.
(Source: Fena/ photo depo.ba)
