The Amendments to the Law on Conflict of Interest are urgent, but need to be comprehensive

Transparency International in Bosnia and Herzegovina (TI BiH) has appealed to the MPs of the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH to start with systemic and long-term resolution of the blockage issue in implementation of the Law on Conflict of Interest in institutions of BiH Government and also submitted to the PABiH a complete Draft Law on the Amendments to the Law on Conflict of Interest.

Banja Luka, 23rd May 2016 – The reason for addressing the MPs in the House of Representatives is the initiative for the amendments to the Law on Conflict of Interest under an urgent procedure, which provided only one amendment that prescribed the use of the seal of the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption and Coordination of the Fight against Corruption (APIK) for the verification of documents performed by the Commission for Deciding on Conflict of Interest.
TI BiH is familiar with the administrative barriers that prevent the work of this Commission and it has been continuously pointed to the need od deblocking the implementation of regulations on conflict of interest in BiH, which has been in force since 2013. However, the solution according to which the legal documents of one institution – Commission, should be verified by the seal of another institutions, i.e. the Agency, cannot be a long-term solution to the problem of the work of the Commission and it represents an extremely unusual and unseen practice. Situation in which the President of the Commission, which is at the same time the MP in the House of Representatives of BiH, signs the legal documents and verifies them with the seal of the Agency, as an independent and autonomous administrative organization, is not based on the relevant regulations and will only cause additional complications in regard to the Commission status.
The question of the status of the institution that will implement the Law on Conflict of Interest must be resolved in a long-term manner, using at the same time the opportunity to improve the existing solutions. Therefore TI BiH submitted to the MPs the Draft Law on the Amendments to the Law on Conflict of Interest designed similar to the solutions in the region, by which it is proposed to transfer the jurisdiction over the implementation of the Law from the Commission for Deciding on Conflict of Interest to APIK. This would remove all the obstacles and problems emerged after the establishment of the Commission for Deciding on Conflict of Interest, which cannot be impartial since it has been mostly composed of the representatives of the political parties, without adequately defined status, due to which it has not determined any conflict of interest ever since it has been established in 2013.
The proposals of TI BiH refer also to expanding the implementation of the Law to all holders of public functions, which includes all selected, nominated and appointed officials in all institutions, organizations, companies and bodies established by the government bodies.
Other proposals made by TI BiH refer to:
– Expansion of limitations for the engagement of the officials in private companies,
– Prohibition of performing multiple public functions, regardless of the government level to which the functions belong,
– Obligation of submitting the property records on the annual basis, and the introduction of controlling the accuracy of the data provided by the reports, as well as publishing the registers of the function holders and their property,
– Increase of monetary sanctions and introduction of some additional sanctions, such as dismissal from office and abolishment of an act generated in a situation of the law violation.
The situation in which practically no one decides on the conflict of law at the level of BiH, FBiH and the Brcko District has led to a complete collapse of the system and left enormous opportunities for the abuse and caused immeasurable damage due to the existence of many cases of conflict of interest which have remained unsanctioned. This is why the legislators need to urgently amend the Law, but instead of adopting partial and half-solutions they must start the systemic improvement of the regulations.

Press rls – 23 5 2016 doc eng