Bosnia Urged to Use Property Seized From Criminals

Bosnia needs to better regulate the destination of property seized as a consequence of criminal activities, experts say, arguing that this would also have a positive impact in the fight against organised crime.

While no law defines this issue at national level, laws exists at the level of the country's two entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska.

These enable the governments of the entities to take possession of properties acquired as a consequence of criminal activities.

However, the laws have never been properly implemented, Ivana Korajlic, the spokesperson of the watchdog organisation Transparency International in Bosnia, told BIRN.

"In Republika Srpska a law exists and there is also an agency which should manage these properties", Korajlic explained. He blamed the lack of results on deficiencies in the courts in the entity.

"Tribunals in the RS work extremely slowly, so they usually they need a lot of time before approving a final verdict establishing the seizure of criminally acquired properties," Korajlic said.

"Another problem is that RS authorities work too slowly when they have to freeze properties of persons accused of criminal activities, so that often they manage to sell or transfer them to other persons and avoid seizure," Korajlic added.

Korajlic noted that although the Federation entity approved a similar law in 2014, it has never been enforced.

"In the past two years, this law has never been applied in any concrete proceedings," the office of the Federation's Law Attorneys confirmed to BIRN on Wednesday.

From 2003 to 2015, tribunals in the Federation ordered the seizure of properties worth 7.5 million euros, according to the TV network Al Jazeera Balkans. But the...