During 2021. only 4 final verdicts for high corruption, most defendants end up with suspended sentences

The average prison sentence for corruption is less than two years, while court proceedings last up to 10 years

Banja Luka, 11. May 2022 – During 2021. In 2011, 147 final verdicts for corruption offenses were passed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, of which only four related to high-level corruption, according to data from the Monitoring of Corruption Prosecution presented by Transparency International in BiH. Despite BiH being one of the countries with the highest level of corruption in Europe according to all relevant research, the judiciary has mainly dealt with small cases and low-ranking officials, while many major scandals have remained unanswered.

All prosecutor’s offices in BiH have filed a total of 235 indictments, of which only 6 or 2.5% relate to high-level corruption. One of them refers to the former Minister of Defense of BiH, Selma Cikotić, who is accused of a criminal act committed more than 10 years ago, which additionally indicates untimely and inefficient prosecution of corruption in BiH.

The data published by TI BIH on the Interactive Map of Corruption Prosecution show that the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH additionally reduced the already small number of indictments and the Special Department for Suppression of Corruption, Organized and Serious Forms of Economic Crime at the RS Republic Prosecutor’s Office did not succeed. It mainly dealt with corruption in “own ranks”, ie in the judiciary itself, and out of a total of 6 confirmed indictments, one was filed against officials of this prosecution for accepting bribes, and three indictments were filed against judges in Banja Luka, East Sarajevo and Prijedor. It should be noted that this prosecution opened some significant investigations into multimillion-dollar abuses in public procurement during the pandemic last year, but the results are still expected in the coming period.

Across BiH, there has been an increase in the number of indictments for corruption compared to 2020. year when due to the pandemic there was a sharp decline in all indicators of the judiciary, so the results are now at about the same level as in previous years. The biggest contribution to that was given by the FBIH prosecutorial system, where the number of indictments was 75 during 2020. increased to 185 last year. On the other hand, the number of indictments in the RS prosecutorial system has increased only slightly, but is still far lower than in the five years before the pandemic, while the Brcko District Prosecutor’s Office has reduced the number of indictments for corruption.

The District Prosecutor’s Office in East Sarajevo, which filed the last indictment for corruption in 2018, has had particularly devastating results for years. In the last seven years, the courts have passed only two convictions for corruption in the cases of this prosecution. The District Prosecutor’s Office in Trebinje has no better results, which did not file a single indictment for corruption last year. Only one was filed by the Cantonal Prosecutor’s Office of the SBK, and only three verdicts for corruption were handed down before the courts in this canton, and in all three cases the defendants were acquitted.

Of the total number of final court verdicts for corruption, 68% ended in suspended sentences, as mostly minor cases were processed, while only 41 verdicts (27.8%) related to prison sentences. Also, more than half of criminal charges (57.3%) end with an order not to conduct an investigation, and as these charges, in addition to citizens, are submitted by competent law enforcement agencies, it is clear that there is no adequate cooperation between these agencies and prosecutors.

The recent monitoring of trials in these cases by a TI BiH sample showed that the average prison sentence for corruption in BiH was less than two years, although the law provides for a penalty of up to 10 years for corruption offenses. The trials in these cases lasted on average three years and seven months, while some cases lasted over 11 years. The judiciary is increasingly facing political pressure and public attacks by high-ranking officials, which, along with the existing systemic shortcomings, certainly affects the efficiency of corruption prosecution.

Press rls_11.05.22_

Processing monitoring 2021_TIBiH_