For years, the European Union has been calling on the authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina to adopt laws that would enable effective control of the assets of public office holders. According to the Central Election Commission (CEC), 96 elected local officials failed to submit asset declarations last year. The BiH election law does not provide for sanctions. A positive example is the Brčko district, where sanctions are prescribed and where the vice president of the district assembly was fined 2,000 marks for undeclared assets.
The European Commission’s Progress Report on Bosnia and Herzegovina last year stated that out of 550 public office holders at the state level, 425 submitted asset declarations.
However, no proceedings have been conducted, no charges have been filed, and no sanctions have been imposed against those who have not submitted asset declarations. In Republika Srpska, the number of submitted asset declarations remains low (136 out of 4,000), while in the Federation of BiH, conflict of interest rules are not enforced.
For now, only the media is involved in checking the assets of high-ranking officials in our country.
The Center for Investigative Reporting has created a database of politicians’ assets. CIN has repeatedly uncovered politicians who have not declared all their assets. Among them is former BiH Security Minister Nenad Nešić, who owns multimillion-dollar real estate in Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“What’s problematic is that, although the law states that they are required to do so, no one checks whether they have submitted their asset records, especially what they have declared. The law does not provide sanctions for politicians who do not provide accurate information about their assets,” says CIN journalist Jasna Fetahović Subašić.
For political analyst Željko Raljić, the assets of judicial officials are questionable, which is why there are no convictions for high-level corruption by politicians.
“People from the judiciary, not only judges and prosecutors, but also lawyers, have enormous assets that no one has controlled, and if they were controlled by the Tax Administration and other authorities responsible for verification, they would determine that these people did not enrich themselves legally,” Raljić points out.
Every elected official who incorrectly declares their assets must bear the consequences, and there are mechanisms for sanctioning them, starting with the Tax Administration, believes lawyer Milko Grmuša.
“Any type of manipulation of income raises suspicion that you have not paid taxes or that it is a criminal offense. You take the Law on the Prevention of Money Laundering, the internal regulations of SIPA and the Financial Intelligence Unit, and they should just do their job. How did you acquire that money if it is not from your salary?”, said Grmuša.
Transparency International emphasizes that transparent ownership and verification of the assets of public office holders is the first step in the fight against corruption.
“If the competent institutions and the entire public had knowledge of a possible unnatural increase in assets, especially during the duration of certain mandates, this would be the first indication that something was wrong during the duration of that mandate and could be further checked,” says Damjan Ožegović from Transparency International.
25 judges and prosecutors who are in office and 80 whose mandates have expired have not submitted their asset reports to the Department for the Implementation of Procedures Based on Reports of the High Judicial Prosecutorial Council. The Department has completed checks in a total of 22 cases, with a positive outcome, and 56 checks are ongoing.
