It seemed easy to find people for commission work in the RS—until a new law stipulated they would get no money for the work in the future. The change allows exceptions, but where it doesn’t, eagerness for the work has cooled.
The commission for the verification of higher education degrees is an example of how some people in the RS can turn a few hours of work into a nice amount of money, all while meeting during the chairman’s working hours.
Reporters from the Center for Investigative Reporting in Sarajevo have collected and analyzed data on payment of commission fees at 12 Republic of Srpska agencies
Komisijske naknade na nivou BiH Novinari Centra za istraživačko novinarstvo (CIN) iz Sarajeva su prikupili i analizirali podatke o isplatama naknada za komisijski rad
Commission fees in BiH Reporters from the Center for Investigative Reporting in Sarajevo have collected and analyzed data on payment of commission fees at 41
Records of more than 3,300 commission members in BiH show how a select group of judges and justice ministries officials are dominating the system and raking in tens of thousands of KM on top of their annual salaries.
Twenty-one institutions in FBiH spent 5.48 million KM on commissioner fees over a three-year period, yet auditors found the commission system encourages idleness and waste, and that rules are ignored. But some ministers say the system is valuable – and make money from it.
What do commissions do? The answer depends on who’s talking. In the case of BiH’s 52 government institutions, commissions have been created to launch pet projects or serve as a pit where authorities can dump difficult political issues. Not all commissioners are paid, but those who are collected at least 3 million KM in the most recent three-year period.
Government officials at all levels of government in BiH say that the hundreds of commissions that cost taxpayers millions of KM are desperately needed. They cannot or will not say how many commissions there are, what they cost each year and offer no accounting. CIN reporters decided to do that work themselves.
An investigation into contracting in RS, though flawed, examines expenditures on government showpiece buildings in Banja Luka and finds that an array of officials helped inflate costs and benefited a favored contractor.
A political sweetener turned sour last week for Edhem Bičakčić, former FBiH Prime Minister and Dragan Čović, his former deputy, when they were charged with overstepping their authority and benefiting others through a housing scheme that was funded at the expense of the FBiH budget.
If the Constitutional Court of BiH rules that a section of the Law on the Court of BiH is unconstitutional at a session scheduled for Friday, it could leave entity and lower courts without an arbiter.
The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIN) in Sarajevo is unique in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the first organization of its kind to be established in Balkans. CIN is dedicated to investigative reporting, aimed toward providing fair and unbiased information, based on evidences and solid proof, to BiH citizens who need to make educated decisions.
Downloading of the content of the CIN is permitted with the mandatory reference to the source at www.cin.ba.
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