The vote just over a week ago in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s parliament to accept a compromise version of the long-stalled Criminal Procedure Code was touted in international circles as a victory.
The changes to the code, required by a ruling by Constitutional Court in June 2017, were stalled because of a lack of political will to revise the provisions in such a way as to ensure that high-level corruption would not be left effectively unsanctioned.
As BIRN previously reported, removing the provisions cited by the court without well-crafted new provisions aimed at the same goal would “create a legal vacuum that would thwart Bosnia’s institutions in fighting organised crime and corruption.”
Yet clearly, such a result was precisely what the country’s political elites – in disagreement on much else – could unite behind, since corruption and patronage distribution is the very point of political power. The foot-dragging extended through the year until mid-September.
But the compromise version of the law contains within it an absolutely fatal flaw: reduction of the investigative and prosecutorial window from ten years to just one. Those who understand the complexity of assembling organised crime and corruption cases recognise such a narrow timeframe as laughable.
With this provision, Bosnia’s political elites – at least at the commanding heights – effectively gain immunity, confining any legal accountability for malfeasance to the lower ranks in their political machines.
In addition, it restricts the ability to grant immunity to gain witness testimony, enabling prosecutors to ‘flip’ smaller players in pursuit of joint criminal enterprises and their leaders – just as the world is watching in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation in the US. This is a law that will pay real dividends for the country’s ruling class, across the board.
Conspiracy of silence
Yet this reality has not been highlighted to an electorate which faces the unenviable task of trying to find digestible options on a political menu which has repeatedly delivered only poisoning and malnutrition.
Instead, the EU delegation to Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Office of the High Representative, and a host of Western embassies have proclaimed this manifestly deficient compromise as yet another famous victory. The fact it was adopted unanimously, given Bosnia’s political politics, ought to have been a clue that something was wrong.
For more read the full of article at The Balkaninsight
