However, none of this laws has teeth that would guarantee that the public would indeed have access to information, or that the office holders would act in accordance with the Commission’s demands.
In the past 11 months, the reporters from the Center for Investigative Reporting in Sarajevo have pored over court records, salary lists, stock exchange records, company registers and other documents to background the information declared by politicians in their asset cards. The investigation involves also the names of the most influential persons—those with powerful party connections who are not obliged to declare their property holdings, but whose property can be viewed from the documents that are supposed to be accessible to the public.
The data base with a bio of every person who was a target of the investigation brings the results of our work that has lasted so long due to different obstacles that we had to cope with. The authorities denied some requests without explanation or wrote that these were personal data not to be disclosed. Some requests had to be resent on several occasions.
Some of the data that the reporters have come by is classified as protected or private records which is why they are not available. The most of the presented records represent the record which should be made available to public in line with the Freedom of Information Act.
