The Republic of Srpska

‘The Republic of Srpska Ministry of the Interior is systematically countering corruption and statistics show that it contributed the fight the most of all the police agencies in BIH’, the Republic of Srpska Minister of the Interior, Mr Dragan Lukač said after the round table, whose topic was ‘Improving and developing systematic response of the Republic of Srpska Ministry of the Interior to corruption’, held at the Administration for Police Education in Banja Luka.  Only this year, the Republic of Srpska Ministry of the Interior submitted 208 reports against 288 persons who committed different offences in the field of corruption thus causing damage in the amount of BAM 12.5 million. Minister Lukač said that, among these offences, abuse of authority, business frauds and accepting bribery were most common, and the suspects obtained illegal material gain in the total amount of BAM 13.5 million for themselves and others they cooperated with. ‘These numbers prove that these corruption offences cause great damage to our institutions, citizens, and the Republic of Srpska itself’, Minister Lukač said. Minister Lukač pointed out that the Republic of Srpska Ministry of the Interior was fighting primarily against the corruption within the Ministry itself. He added that during the current year, several procedures were initiated against police officers, and reports were submitted against 10 members of the Ministry for committing offences in the field of corruption. ‘One of the examples of how our systematic fight against corruption is introduction of contemporary radars in the operation of traffic police. A police officer cannot alter the information recorded on these devices and therefore cannot negotiate with the person who is to be punished. Finally, they cannot accept bribery. As you know well, we managed to implement several operations within which we arrested our members for committing the criminal offences in the field of corruption. This is how we fight against corruption within our institution. Corruption is a phenomenon that disintegrates every system and nobody is immune to it’, Minister Lukač said to the attendees of the round table. The round table was organised on the occasion of 9 December, the International Anti-Corruption Day.