BiH is the second worst ranked country in Europe in terms of corruption: The key problem is a dysfunctional judiciary and attacks on civil liberties

Sarajevo, January 30, 2024 – Bosnia and Herzegovina ranks worst in the region according to Corruption Perception Index (CPI) of this year, published by Transparency International (TI), and became the second worst positioned country in Europe when it comes to the state of corruption. Only Russia has a worse result, which this year has a score of 35, on a scale from 0 (worst) to 100 (best result). Although BiH received one point more than last year, it is falling behind in comparison to all previous years, and this result still keeps BiH at the bottom when it comes to the region and in 108 place in the world, out of 180 countries.

The focus of the CPI global research this year is on the justice sector, and as the key reason for this state of affairs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, TI in the report cites the dysfunctional rule of law, pervasive corruption in conditions of general democratic decline and attacks on media freedom and civil society, which monitor the work of the government and play an important role in detecting and suppressing corruption. The authorities in the Republic of Srpska are most “deserving” of the latter, intensifying efforts to silence critics through the criminalization of defamation and a series of laws that seek to suppress media freedom and the activities of civil society organizations. In addition, it is added that the RS Immunity Law, if adopted, will be an additional blow to the already weakened rule of law, as it will make it impossible to prosecute high-ranking officials for corruption, who are almost never prosecuted due to the catastrophic state of the judiciary throughout BiH.

The regional report states that the judicial systems of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia are mostly incapable of prosecuting and sanctioning public officials who abuse their position, and this is confirmed by the data published by TI BiH every year, where we have disastrous results when it comes to the number of indictments and convictions for high corruption. Last year, we also had a series of acquittals against high-ranking officials for major corruption cases such as Bobar Banka and Energolinija, where in the end no one was held accountable for multimillion-dollar damage to the public interest. Also, a series of scandals in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s judiciary and investigations against the holders of the most important judicial functions have further undermined the public’s trust, which was also confirmed by research conducted by TI BIH, where over 40% of citizens see corruption mostly in the judiciary, which plays a key role in the fight against corruption. The reform of judiciary, which has been insisted on for a long time, has been completely blocked by key political parties, and the recent changes to the HJPC Law have not yet ensured the integrity of judges and prosecutors, as this institution has acknowledged the existence of problems when implementing new authorizations related to checking property records.

– Instead of strengthening the independence and efficiency of prosecution offices and courts, we have systematic efforts to collapse key institutions, prosecutions based on political directives and interests, while informal interest networks within the judiciary are responsible and accountable to politics and organized crime, not to citizens, said Ivana Korajlić , executive director of TI BiH.

We have seen a similar approach of the Bosnian authorities in other anti-corruption reforms, where numerous reform laws were meaningless and adopted only for the sake of the appearance of reforms, and the adoption of key laws necessary for a more effective fight against corruption is still awaited, such as the law on conflicts of interest, protection of corruption whistleblowers in Federation of BiH, and new laws on public procurement and HJPC. Also, reforms of public administration, public companies and the most important electoral reform were missing, where again we have attempts by the authorities to make technical changes to the Electoral Law meaningless and leave room for stealing votes, trading election boards and misuse of public resources.

This is why BiH is mentioned in this year’s CPI assessment for the region of Eastern Europe and Central Asia among the countries that have been experiencing decline for years, together with Turkey, Tajikistan, Serbia and Russia, which recorded the worst result so far. On the other hand, some countries from this region have made significant progress in the fight against corruption in the last ten years, and among them are Moldova, Ukraine, North Macedonia and Kosovo.