While the number of reported corruption cases rises, there are fewer trials and investigations against politicians can take years. BiH courts have acquitted one third of the white-collar defendants who have come before them, and mainly only the lowest level offenders get convicted. One out of five convicts get a jail term, while 80 percent gets away with a fine or probation.
There is no guarantee that people sentenced to prison will ever serve any time. Some of the guilty, including some officeholders, have figured out how to postpone lock up for years. Others don’t ever go in.
Because original documents are missing from the case file of Čović and the Lijanovićies, legal proceedings could be endangered, according to the Prosecutor’s Office of Sarajevo Canton.
Twenty-five officeholders and government officials found guilty of abuse of office have been pardoned over the past five years. Some of them managed to avoid prison, while criminal records were erased for others. Some of the pardoned continue to work for public companies or serve in office.
Connections with political parties in some cases guaranteed a way to solve housing issues. Such examples can be found in Banjaluka, Sarajevo and Mostar. Real property is bought with money from public revenue. While some cases ended up in court, others are waiting for prosecutors to act on them.
Mustafa Suljagić has tried for years to withdraw nearly 270,000 KM worth of foreign exchange deposited at his account with Privredna Banka Sarajevo.
Početkom devedesetih godina banke u BiH zaledile su devizne štedne račune građana na kojima je bilo i do 2,75 milijardi DEM. Ni nakon više od 17 godina, štediše nisu u mogućnosti podići svoj novac.
Hundreds of thousands of BiH citizens who have been unable to get to their life savings since the war should be watching the outcome of the court case Suljagić vs. BiH in the Human Rights Court in Strasbourg.
A Kakanj lawyer admits he took 5,000 KM from a client who secretly taped him saying the money was used to bribe a judge.
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.
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