Institutions and the judiciary ignore abuses of public budgets

Billions of public money marks are spent in BiH in a non-transparent manner, and institutions and the judiciary are not interested in spending money inappropriately, concluded the panel discussion “Media Reporting on Corruption and Misuse of Public Funds in BiH” organized by Transparency International in BiH (TI in BiH) and Business portal CAPITAL.ba.

Banja Luka, March 26, 2019 – A panel discussion was held today in Banja Luka in the presence of representatives of several media and non-governmental organizations from BiH, on the occasion of the completion of the project “Exploring public money flows”, implemented with USAID support within the IMEP media empowerment program.

“This is a good opportunity to discuss the effects of research on the misuse of public funds, what problems and challenges journalists face when researching topics on public finances in the complex BiH system, but also the pressures they suffer in their work,” said Ivana Korajlic, acting. Executive Director of TI in BiH.

The editor of the CAPITAL.ba business portal, Siniša Vukelić, pointed out that this portal, together with TI in BiH, wanted to draw journalists’ attention to the tools and ways in which they can investigate how public money is spent.

“Although sometimes everything seems legal, money often ends up where it is not intended. Within the project, research stories were made which will be published and which showed the shortcomings of the institutions in BiH. We have noticed that there is less and less transparency of the government in spending public money, and those who want to cheat the system, the law allows them to do so. “, said Vukelic.

Although the effects of published stories are often absent, one story that has an effect is worth fighting for.

“We are not writing in vain, it is very important that in a country chained by corruption, we show that we do not give up pointing out omissions, argumentative and fact-based journalism,” said Vukelic.

Journalist of the Žurnal.info portal Avdo Avdić, who was one of the panelists, said that unfortunately there are no effects of the stories that are published, and whose topic is the theft of money in the amount of more than 500 KM.

“State institutions are not interested in the misuse of public money, and citizens are not interested. If you publish evidence of multimillion-dollar crime, the text will be read by a maximum of 20,000 people, and if you publish that someone stole 20 KM, then everyone is hooked on it. In a rather poor society, people find it easier to accept that someone stole 20 KM, a million seems unreal to them. The problem is that judicial institutions stand up for the protection of crime, and the essence is that they are real criminals in the country. “, Avdic pointed out.

The journalist of the Bljesak.info portal, Berislav Jurič, said that such projects and workshops are very important in order to encourage young journalists to dig under the surface.

“People in BiH need to open their eyes, people have forgotten that officials are our employees and that we pay them and that they have our money at their disposal. Citizens overwhelmed with problems have forgotten that and it is time for corruption to come to the surface and for officials to see that they cannot do whatever they want with our money. “, Juric pointed out.

Within this project, 15 journalists from the media in BiH were trained, 10 research stories were made, of which three were the best awarded. Texts by Berislav Jurič from the Bljesak.info portal on the construction of a sports hall in Mostar , Vanja Stokić from the eTrafika.net portal on the spending of the Brčko District for public lighting and a text by Dejan Tovilović from Nezavisne novine on spending money on hiring trainees in Republika Srpska were awarded.