Bosnian Politicians Remain Secretive About Their Assets

The state electoral commission last week put the statements about the assets owned by some politicians back on its website, but critics expressed suspicions about its accuracy because there is no one to check the data.

Only the statements submitted by elected representatives like MPs are on the site; the assets of appointed representatives like government ministers remain private.

"The Central Election Commission follows the law and at the moment, the commission can publish only statements of those who are elected and not delegated," Maksida Piric, the spokesperson for the Central Election Commission, told BIRN.

The electoral commission withdrew the all statements from its website in 2014 after the Agency for Personal Data Protection won a court case with its claim that politicians' assets shouldn't be made public due to the law protecting personal data.

Critics however argue that the republication of the asset statements is of no great help, as the main problem remains - no one is checking if all the data is correct and complete.

"The law did not specify that someone should be in charge of checking if the data is true or false," Ivana Korajlic, a spokesperson for Transparency International in Bosnia and Herzegovina, told BIRN.

"We cannot say that the process is transparent but at least now we have something that is available publicly, which is better than nothing," Korajlic added.

The country's conflict of interest legislation says that ministers are obliged to provide statements of assets in cases in which there is a doubt that they might have conflict of interest.

Campaigners want the conflict of interest law to be changed to ensure fuller disclosures.

"At the moment there is a procedure to...