BOSNIA - RS GOVERNMENT FILES CRIMINAL SUIT AGAINST

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 SARAJEVO 001803 SIPDIS EUR (JONES),EUR/SCE (HYLAND, FOOKS, STINCHCOMB),INL (MARNEY); NSC FOR HELGERSON; OSD FOR BEIN; DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (ALEXANDRE) E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/28/2018 TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR PHUM KDEM KCRM KJUS BK SUBJECT: BOSNIA - RS GOVERNMENT FILES CRIMINAL SUIT AGAINST PDHR GREGORIAN AND OTHERS REF: A. SARAJEVO 1795 AND PRIOR ¶B. SARAJEVO 1628 Classified By: CDA JUDITH B. CEFKIN FOR REASONS 1.4 (B) AND (D) ¶1. (U) The Republika Srpska government on November 27 filed "criminal charges" with the State Prosecutor's Office against Principal Deputy Representative Raffi Gregorian, Acting Chief Prosecutor Milorad Barasin, and seven other individuals in connection with the State Prosecutor's investigation of alleged corruption associated with Republika Srpska (RS) government and other building contracts (Ref A). This move came a day after it publicly released the contents of the charges against Barasin, PDHR Gregorian, Harij Furlan (the Slovene prosecutor working on the case),David Upcher (the former head of the State Prosecutor's Special Department for Organized Crime -- his successor is Drew Engel),Sefko Sahbegovic (the State Court judge who approved the temporary seizure order),Bakir Hadziomerovic (the editor of the popular talk show &60 minutes8),Slobodan Vaskovic (a &60 minutes8 correspondent),Dragomir Babic (the head of the Banja Luka based NGO National Front),and Dragan Lukac, the Deputy Director of the State Investigative and Protective Agency (SIPA). All nine individuals are accused of being part of a criminal conspiracy working to "cause damage" to the RS government and to jeopardize its reputation as a stable political community. In addition, Barasin, Furlan, Upcher, and Sahbegovic are accused of committing disciplinary offenses in connection with the case. ¶2. (C) The RS government's allegations are as follows. PDHR Gregorian had abused his position by exerting pressure on the State Prosecutor's Office to investigate charges against the RS government. The State Prosecutor's Office, in turn, had used anonymous letters by the director of the NGO "Narodni Front" in its investigation against the RS government. The staff of "60 minutes" had published "untruths" about the RS in an effort to exert pressure on prosecutors to the RS government's detriment. The RS government also reiterated its claim that the State Prosecutor's Office did not have jurisdiction in the investigation because the alleged corruption charges were covered by RS entity law. The RS government said that it is on this basis it filed charges against the judge who approved the temporary seizure order and SIPA Deputy Director for directing SIPA investigators to execute the court's temporary search order. Finally, the RS government criticized the State Prosecutor's Office for not heeding the implications of the Constitutional Court's interim decision in the Martinovic case (Ref B),in which the Constitutional Court halted midway the trial of Herzegovina Neretva Canton officials accused of corruption because of the questions the defendants' lawyers raised about the state's jurisdiction in the case. (Note: We issued a statement to a television news agency upon its request, repeating our previous message included in Ref A. We also echoed a statement the High Rep had issued stating that the criminal suit was an attack against the international community, and we stated our support for the work of the officials and other individuals named in the suit who are working to support Bosnia and Herzegovina's aspirations to become fully-integrated in the Euro-Atlantic community. End Note) ¶3. (U) The RS criminal suit and its handover of the documentation requested by the State Prosecutor's Office to SIPA received significant press coverage. The coverage consisted mostly of factual accounts of the events that had taken place, and a few commentaries, mostly by RS politicians. The most hard-hitting response by an RS official came from Rajko Vasic, the Executive Secretary of RS Prime Minister Milorad Dodik's party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD),whose comments appeared in today's edition of the hard-line RS-based daily Fokus. Vasic blasted OHR, saying that it tries to use the methodology "employed in preparation for an attack on Iraq," (referring to the reports on WMD) and "makes up stories about general criminalization in which everything done by the Government and Prime Minister Dodik is of a criminal nature" in the RS. Vasic further called on the international community to abandon its "witch-hunt methods." On the other hand, a lawyer wrote in the November 25 RS edition of the SARAJEVO 00001803 002 OF 002 Belgrade-based daily tabloid Euroblic that this latest crisis demonstrated that the RS was not a modern democratic society. The lawyer also pointed out that the RS government had deprived taxpayers of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, and had saddled taxpayers with the cost of hiring an American law firm to represent it. ¶4. (C) In today's meeting of the Steering Board Ambassadors, HighRep Miroslav Lajcak called on all PIC Ambassadors to support a strong joint statement criticizing the RS government's decision to file criminal charges against the PDHR and the other individuals named in its suit. All PIC Ambassadors except for the Russians supported the initiative. The statement was issued today. Separately, contacts from OHR's Legal Department told us that the Department does not plan to do an in-depth analysis of the charges, because the charges are "utterly embarrassing" and in their opinion, do not merit further discussion. They went on to say that the charges did not appear to be written by a lawyer considering the legal language and the number of factual errors contained in the document. These factors, they said, led them to conclude that the criminal suit should be considered as a political sideshow rather than as a serious legal matter. ¶5. (C) Comment: We concur with OHR's assessment about the criminal suit brought on by the RS government against PDHR Raffi Gregorian and the other eight individuals named in the suit. It will be up to the State Prosecutor to determine if the case has merit. Clearly it does not. Rather, Dodik is conducting a political intimidation attack under the guise of "law." CEFKIN