Establishment of special departments for fighting corruption at the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina level, focus of OSCE supported meeting

The establishment of special departments for fighting corruption within the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) Supreme Court and Prosecutor’s Office was the focus of a peer-to-peer meeting of entity and cantonal level judges, prosecutors, police and representatives of the FBiH Government, held on 12 December 2019 in Sarajevo.

The meeting was organized by the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), as a follow up to its report “Trial Monitoring of Corruption Cases in BiH: Second Assessment”, which, inter alia, recommended that the plans to establish the special departments at the FBiH level should be reappraised by the FBiH political and judicial authorities based on all relevant factors.

The report also identified the lack of political willingness to improve the effectiveness of the judicial response to corruption. “The failure of the FBiH institutions to implement the Law on Fighting Corruption and Organized Crime in FBiH, which entered into force in February 2015, is a prime example of this. The special departments envisaged under that Law exist only on paper, reinforcing this pernicious culture of impunity. Political institutions, in co-operation with the judiciary, have to take responsibility for tackling this situation so that legal certainty can be re-established,” said Kathleen Kavalec, Head of the OSCE Mission to BiH.

Participants agreed that the establishment of such departments is a strategic decision that must be based on a detailed assessment of possible benefits and detriments taking into account the necessary resources, foreseen jurisdiction, and the case-load that would, accordingly, be transferred from cantonal to the FBiH level.    

The meeting was held within the project “Assessing Needs of Judicial Response to Corruption through Monitoring of Criminal Cases”, implemented by the OSCE Mission to BiH and supported by the United States Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.