INFORMATION FOR MEDIA

Regarding the disclosure to the public of the indictment or parts of the indictment of the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH against the suspects Fadil Novalić et al., the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH informs the media and the public about the following:

1)        After the examination of the suspects in this case in the period between 30 November and 2 December 2020, on which occasion the suspects were handed the respective Records of Examination indicating the grounds for suspicion for which they are suspected, part of the Records was published in the media and falsely presented as a “draft indictment”.

2)        After the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH had prepared and submitted for confirmation to the Court of BiH the indictment Ref. No. T20 0 KTO 0018837 20 dated 4 December 2020 against the suspects Fadil Novalić et al., the indictment was published in the media, and the content of the publication also included the suspects and proposed witnesses’ personal information.

In addition to the fact that the public has been misled by these illegal actions, i.e. by the unconfirmed indictment submitted to the media, numerous illegalities were committed with regard to the unauthorised publication of the suspects and proposed witnesses’ personal information.

These actions violated the integrity of the procedure for confirming the indictment by the Court of BiH and endangered the suspects and witnesses’ rights.

The Prosecutor’s Office of BiH perceives any unauthorised access to documents and contents from the criminal record as yet another pressure in a series of pressures on the work in this case.

We would like to inform the public that any acts of making the documents and data from the casefile available or of their transferring, which are identified or learned about within the judicial proceedings and which may not be made available by law, will be subject to urgent investigation because of suspicion that a criminal offence – Breach of Secrecy of Proceedings under Article 237 of the Criminal Code of BiH has been committed.

Furthermore, the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH will inform the BiH Agency for Protection of Personal Data (AZOP) of this and request it to take measures and actions within its competence regarding the sanctioning of the disclosure of the suspects and witnesses’ personal information.

Both domestic and international organisations monitoring the work on high-level corruption cases will be promptly informed about all of the above and their urgent involvement in the process of monitoring the work of state bodies in this case will be requested in order to prevent abuses.