In the scope of the ”DARE!” campaign, the EU Police Mission has invited prominent members of the BiH society to reflect on the situation in the country in particular with regards to crime and corruption. 

Their observations are being published through columns in daily and weekly print media. You can read this and all future features by clicking on the link “Columns” within the right-hand side menu of the EUPM website.

Is there a cure for the galloping organised crime and corruption in BiH and in the Balkans? This question, as well as the answer to it, should be considered one of the key priorities for beating the anarchy which has been seriously undermining the prospects of the region. Analysis of this gigantic problem seems to need, first of all, to stress that the main objective of organised crime and corruption is to earn profit through drug dealing, weapons smuggling, prostitution, pornography, terrorism, bribery... This is a global problem to which even the most developed countries of the world are not immune.

For example, the Italian mafia, whose wealth is estimated at hundreds of billions of Euros, is among the strongest, as well as the Russian mafia, which is believed to be controlling a major part of the banking system in Russia and subjecting it to its unrestrained striving for wealth through money laundering. Russia is said to be the country where the number of billionaires has rapidly increased, while the origin of their property remains secret. Tycoons spring up like mushrooms in BiH and countries of the region, but the way they pile up their wealth is a mystery. Countries whose transition process has decelerated, such as BiH, Serbia, Romania, Albania, are more vulnerable to organised crime and corruption because their economy is almost devastated and are located in an over sensitive geopolitical space between East and West. Organised crime and corruption know no state borders and ethnicity. The Balkan mafia functions as a transnational company.

The latest example to back up this thesis is the recent murder of the owner of Zagreb’s weekly magazine Nacional , Ivo Pukanic , and journalist Niko Franjić. Police investigation reveals that the network of organisers, aids, and executors of that gruesome crime spreads from Croatia, through BiH, Serbia, Bulgaria... Similar thing happened after the murder of the former Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić, when suspected murderers Milorad ‘Legija’ Vukovic and his mafia brothers were provided shelter by their aids living outside Serbia. This reminder of extreme mafia cases does not aim to neglect the new breed of a more ‘decent’ social class in the region, tycoons, who use their financial power i.e. their connection with political elites, to create the course of political developments. 

Openly speaking, parts of the political elites sometimes function as “employers” of the mafia milieu by (not)deliberately disregarding organised crime springing up from that milieu.  However, sometimes things function the other way around – the mafia milieu functions as an “employer” of parts of the political elites by bribing them to prevent the fight against organised crime. This practice is an open secret. While countries of the region are getting more and more strongly embraced by organised crime, so-called ordinary citizens sink in apathy and disbelief that they can change anything by themselves.

This feeling of powerlessness produces citizen passivity. It seems that the spread of organised crime in the countries of the region should get a well-considered regional response. Adoption and practical use of more rigorous anti-corruption laws, as well as development of services specialised in organised crime prevention, the Balkan countries would smash the head of mafia monster. Suppression of organised crime in the region, especially in BiH whom the World Bank this year ranked 105th “on the ease of doing business”, is not a spectacle, but an urgent necessity. Without such action, it will be very difficult to gain access to the world’s business flows.

Pejo Gašparević