MEETING OF THE WORKING TEAM OF THE BIH PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE AND BIH INDIRECT TAXATION AUTHORITY HELD. THE MAIN TOPIC OF THE MEETING WAS COLLECTION OF TAXES FROM LARGE DEBTORS AND PROSECUTION OF RESPONSIBLE PERSONS

The meeting of the operative team, which was formed on the model of action of the Croatian USKOK and which consists of Prosecutors of the BiH Prosecutor’s Office and Inspectors and officers of the Indirect Taxation Authority, was held on the premises of the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH.  

The meeting was attended by the Chief Prosecutor Goran Salihović and the Director of the Indirect Taxation Authority of BiH, Mr. Miro Džakula.

At this meeting, there was discussion on concrete activities which will be initiated in order to collect VAT debt from large debtors who owe multi-million amounts for unpaid value added taxes. 

Representatives of the Indirect Taxation Authority of BiH prepared for the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH a part of the requested documentation pertaining to the tax and customs arrears, and the Prosecutors of the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH will analyze the material to see whether there are elements of crimes in these failures to pay taxes, whereupon criminal prosecution of responsible persons will follow.

The Prosecutor’s Office of BiH and the Indirect Taxation Authority of BiH have realized that there some economic operators in our country that owe as much as several million BAM of unpaid taxes, and both the Prosecutor’s Office and the Indirect Taxation Authority are determined to undertake joint activities aimed at collecting unpaid liabilities and prosecute responsible persons.

Some of these debtors are entity-level institutions and enterprises, and they owe large sums of money for unpaid taxes; therefore, these activities will be focused on finding out how the debts were accumulated and discovering responsible persons.

The Chief Prosecutor has already issued orders and instructions to the assigned Prosecutors, who are members of the joint working team, regarding the further activities aimed at detecting and prosecuting responsible persons.

The total VAT debt in our country amounts to cca. 300 million BAM, almost a half of which, i.e. 142 million BAM, represents an inherited debt which has been existing since the merger of entity customs authorities and establishment of the Indirect Taxation Authoritiy of BiH in 2005.

Intensive activities are being carried out in these cases to prevent the application of the statute of limitation in some of the cases, since, according to some estimates, the statute of limitation has already become applicable to a part of the debt, and it has been concluded that urgent action needs to be undertaken to find the persons responsible for enabling the application of the statute of limitation and to prevent such situations in future. 

The Prosecutor’s Office of BiH and the Indirect Taxation Authority of BiH are determined to confront all forms of tax evasions and non-payments of taxes in our country, as those are extremely detrimental crimes which endanger the economic system of Bosnia and Herzegovina and do harm to all the citizens of our country.  

After the establishment of the joint team modeled on USKOK, the collection of VAT in the first four months of this year is higher by 100 million BAM than in the same period last year, which is certainly the result of forming this joint authority for tax evasion prosecution.   

The next meeting of the operational team will be held on Thursday and intensive investigative activities will commence in the first ten cases of large tax debts.

Prosecution of criminal offenses of economic and financial crime is an important segment of strengthening security and rule of law in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s path towards Europe.