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

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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