After a delay of several years and months of delay, the umbrella judicial body in Bosnia and Herzegovina has begun checking the assets of judges and prosecutors, it was confirmed during the first day of the session of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HJPC).
The Department for the Implementation of Procedures has checked 11 asset files out of more than 1,400 submitted, while for almost 30 they are checking the reason why the data was not submitted and the possible initiation of disciplinary proceedings.
Head of the Department Vesna Pirija confirmed that a total of 1,417 reports have been submitted from 1,477 persons required to submit reports for 2024.
She said that only 60 reports that the Department currently has in the registered database have not been submitted, or 60 persons required to submit reports. She explained that 27 of them are judicial office holders whose mandate expired in 2024 and 2025, and that the Law on the HJPC does not prescribe any sanctions for this group of obliged persons.
She also stated that 33 judicial office holders did not submit a report, and that the Department is currently working on verifying the reasons for submission, since among these obliged persons there are four cases who submitted a report only via the electronic form that was previously in use, and not in paper form. Pirija said that they also have informally reported long-term sick leave and that they will look for reasons for not submitting a report
“Only after verifying this data will we act in accordance with our legal obligations, which is to inform the Office of the Disciplinary Prosecutor about who did not submit a report, since violating the provisions of the law regarding the submission of reports is also a disciplinary offense,” said Pirija.
She reminded that this system of submitting reports, namely the form and scope of data, was not applied for 2023. For that year, the total number of reports submitted is 1,393, and the total number of taxpayers is still being processed.
Pirija referred to the activities of this department since July, saying that the Council is aware of the inspection procedure that the Personal Data Protection Agency has been conducting against the HJPC since January this year, as well as the activities that the Council and the Department have undertaken. Detektor previously wrote that the Agency issued a decision that data cannot be processed until a functional department is established, which began operating in early June 2025.
Pirija explained that the Council tried to implement all the ordered measures, but during the reporting process itself, the Association of Judges and Prosecutors reacted to the HJPC and the Agency because they believed that these measures were not being consistently complied with.
Pirija recalled that, among other things, the electronic submission of the form without using the electronic procedure, as well as the issue of consent on the form, were problematic.
“Our department has found itself faced with a truly challenging role. We had to respond to all of this, all while keeping in mind the ultimate goal and priority of preserving the integrity of the process, so we were forced to adapt in this reporting process,” she said.
According to her, the department has put the electronic form for filling out reports out of service, and offered taxpayers a regular Excel form that is not linked to a database, and in this way the majority submitted their reports.
All of this represents aggravating circumstances for the department, as she said, because all processes that were automated at the beginning have now practically been returned to a manual system of procedures, which will “require additional resources and time for processing reports.”
Pirija reminded that certain appointments still stand, that is, that holders of judicial positions have been appointed, but cannot assume office until they have passed the verification.
“A total of 11 checks have been carried out so far… We have worked according to priorities. What the Department has enabled is the smooth functioning of the Council, because we have checked the members of the Council whose mandates are expiring,” she said, adding that five judicial office holders who are waiting to take office have been checked9.
Pirija also stated that there are a certain number of cases that are in progress, around 70, while 30 are in the phase of additional checks.
HJPC President Sanin Bogunić, as well as several other members of the Council, have praised the work of this department.
Davor Martinović said that he was perhaps too impressed by media reports that a large number of judicial office holders had not submitted a report, but that he had noticed that 98 percent had submitted a report according to the Department’s table. Pirija said that the media probably received information before the deadline itself expired, but that the situation was stated with the end of the deadline.
Detektor previously reported that only a third of judges and prosecutors reported their assets to the HJPC five days before the deadline.
At today’s session of the Department for Judicial Analytics and Reporting, an increase in cases that are becoming statute-barred in the Municipal Court in Sarajevo was noted. All 137 cases in which the statute of limitations has expired in this court relate to traffic offense cases.
This court explained the reasons for the increase in these cases and said, among other things, that it had been noted that misdemeanor orders of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Sarajevo Canton are submitted for court decision when the statute of limitations for initiating misdemeanor proceedings has already expired.
In complex cases of organized crime and high-level corruption, only one case was completed by the end of this year, while 11 remain that should be completed by the end of the year. From the plan for the end of next year, the main hearings in four cases have been completed, while 20 are still ongoing. In almost half of the cases, nine of them are not maintaining the dynamics of the main hearing and procedural discipline.
At today’s session, the agenda included an item related to the publication of reports on the assets and interests of members of the Council who are not judges and prosecutors, but it was postponed to another session until a decision by the Constitutional Court of BiH.
The session will continue tomorrow, BIRN BiH reports.
