Bosnia Probes Missing Flood Prevention Funds

The police chief in Bosnia's Federation entity, Dragan Lukac, said an investigation would be launched to determine whether money set aside for preventing flood damage had been spent illegally.

“One must not stay deaf or mute,” he said on Monday. “Someone has to be held responsible and if we determine that a crime occurred, together with the prosecutors we will file criminal charges.”

The aim of the investigation that Lukac said the Federation Police will conduct aims to determine responsibility for the extent of any losses.

The Ministries of Agriculture, Water and Forestry, Civil Protection and the Agency for Sava Water Area will be under particular focus.

“We will check for any irregularities in investments,” Lukac said referring to the Sava agency's obligation to make contingency plans for - and so prevent - flood damage.

“We will also check what the entity agriculture ministry and similar ministries at cantonal levels did,” he noted.

The Prime Minster of Bosnia's other entity, Republika Srpska, Zeljka Cvijanovic, last week said the flood damage could have been less there, too, had everything been done by the rules.

“That does not mean that the catastrophe could have been prevented but the consequences could have been reduced to a minimum,” Cvijanovic said.

Over the past two years, the Federation entity has used than 18 million euro from funds set aside for the prevention of floods.

It returned 8 million at the beginning of this year while another 10 million euro remains on loan until August.

Areas around the river Sava in northern Bosnia suffered severe flooding because the embankments were not large enough or broke during the flooding.

A Federation...