TI BiH sued Nezavisne Novine and Glas Srpske for defamation

Transparency International BiH (TI BiH) filed a defamation lawsuit against Nezavisne Novine and Glas Srpske since, in the period between June 24th and July 18th this year, they published a series of articles in which TI BiH is tendentiously and maliciously linked with alleged practice of racketeering of alleged businessmen from Republic of Srpska (RS), creating the atmosphere of public lynch. With this, TI BiH wants to protect its credibility and to contribute to the true and complete informing of the public.

Nezavisne Novine and Glas Srpske based their articles on unsubstantiated and fabricated information, and statements of “protected witnesses” of dubious qualifications and credibility, that were published without the consultation of TI BiH, therefore putting TI BiH tendentiously and without reservation in the context of organized crime.

The articles were published after TI BiH had warned about the serious indications for the large scale corruption in the privatization process in RS, where structures of power in RS were mentioned, in whose disposal these newspapers put themselves, on the basis of which is clear that the aim of these articles was destroying the TI BiH credibility.

TI BiH is the organization whose main purpose is fight against the corruption and cannot in any way be linked with these writings. TI BiH, therefore, expects from the BiH Prosecutor’s Office to discover within their investigation the authors and financers of this orchestrated chase against this organization.