Prosecutor of the Special Department for Organized Crime, Economic Crime and Corruption of the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina has issued an Indictment against the following persons:

- BOBAN PEĆANAC, born in 1960 in Drvar, a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina,

- DANE BIKIĆ, born in 1957 in Bosansko Grahovo, a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and

- STANKO GRAHOVAC, born in 1958 in Vareš, a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

These accused persons are charged with procuring false documents with an intention of using them as genuine, without the consent or knowledge of persons whose personal data were taken illegally, in the period from the beginning of 2014 and until May of 2016, while the accused persons were members of an internationally organized group, whose organizers operated in the territories of the Republic of Croatia, Republic of Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. They are charged with using the personal data of BiH citizens in violation of the conditions prescribed by law, and with misleading the competent authority into verifying an untrue statement in a public document or a book, which should serve as evidence in legal traffic.

According to the allegations in the Indictment, these accused persons had a well-designed and well-established system for the theft of BiH citizens’ identities, in accordance with which they would first obtain personal data of those BiH citizens in respect of whom they had determined that those persons had not applied for the issuance of the CIPS personal documents; subsequently, the accused persons would use such personal data to make and obtain counterfeit travel documents of the Republic of Slovenia, as well as various other identification documents, which they would then sell to persons with criminal background from the Republic of Serbia, Republic of Montenegro and Bulgaria, who were buying such documents for the purpose of concealing their identities and evading criminal prosecution. After obtaining the personal documents of Bosnia and Herzegovina, they would go to other European countries, moving freely and using counterfeit BiH documents.

At the same time, by the aforementioned actions, these accused persons violated the reputation and integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as of the Agency for Identification Documents, Registers and Data Exchange (IDDEEA) of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the competent ministries for issuing documents, thus causing harmful consequences for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Moreover, given that the persons from the European Union, namely from Bulgaria, Slovenia and Croatia, as well as from the countries of the region, also participated in the perpetration of the aforementioned criminal offences, and that the counterfeit documents originating from those areas were used, the entire case had a very serious dimension of crime with international consequences.

These accused persons are charged with the commission of the criminal offence referred to in Article 366 of the Criminal Code of Republika Srpska - Commission of a Criminal Offence by Members of a Criminal Association, in conjunction with the criminal offence of Unauthorised Use of Personal Data, as referred to in Article 157 of the Criminal Code of Republika Srpska and in conjunction with the criminal offence of Forging an Official Document, as referred to in Article 347 of the Criminal Code of Republika Srpska.

The Indictment has been forwarded to the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina for confirmation.