TEMPORARY DEPLOYMENT OF A FRENCH PROSECUTOR TO THE PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA IMPLEMENTED WITHIN IPA 2013 PROJECT COMES TO AN END

In the offices of the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Acting Chief Prosecutor Gordana Tadić held a farewell meeting with Mr Bernard Legras, a prosecutor from the Republic of France, who was deployed to the Special Department for Organized Crime, Economic Crime and Corruption of the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina (POOK) for a certain period of time within the IPA 2013 project and who carried out all of his activities under the sole supervision of the Acting Chief Prosecutor of the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Head of the Special Department for Organised Crime, Economic Crime and Corruption of the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Previously, in line with the Action Plan for the implementation of the IPA 2013 project entitled ‘International Cooperation in Criminal Justice’, the Acting Chief Prosecutor, together with her associates, had held a meeting with Mr Enzo R. Bartol, IPA 2013 Western Balkans Resident Expert for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a series of additional meetings with representatives from the French Ministry of Justice, State School for Judges and Prosecutors and the Department of International Judicial Cooperation from France, during which a Memorandum of Understanding was developed and following which the French prosecutor was hired.

Within his work in the POOK, the French prosecutor provided assistance in the form of advisory activities, exchange of experiences, transfer of knowledge, arrangement of trainings for prosecutors and provision of practical support with regard to legal requirements and technical aspects related to the implementation of special investigative actions and activities under the model of joint investigative teams.

The Acting Chief Prosecutor of the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina expressed her appreciation to the French Embassy and the IPA Project for the deployment of the French prosecutor to the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who, with his legal and practical experiences, provided assistance to prosecutors working on organised crime at the POOK.

For a number of years now, prosecutors from the Special Department for Organised Crime have been actively involved in complex international investigations and inter-state investigative teams, as well as in previously established joint investigative teams between France and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and have been conducting investigations into organised crimes in connection with other criminal offences provided for in the Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which were committed either in the territory of France or in Bosnia and Herzegovina.