Behind the Prosecutor of BiH from the U.S. “black list”
Diana Kajmakovic is currently a prosecutor in the War Crimes
Department of the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).
She was appointed to this position by acting chief
prosecutor Milanko Kajganic in August of this year. She was transferred from
the position of head of the Special Department for Organized Crime and
Corruption, to which she was appointed on October 25th, 2021.
The reason is that her name appeared in investigations
involving the use of the encrypted Sky application. The application was used by
criminals to communicate with each other.
After the United States (U.S.) FBI and Europol deciphered
part of the messages and forwarded the information to the local police, arrests
followed both in Europe and in BiH and in the countries of the Western Balkans.
Kajmakovic was part of the team that analyzed these messages.
What is the U.S. accusing her of?
In the explanation of the Office of Foreign Assets Control
(OFAC) of the U.S. Department of Finance, published on September 26th, it is
stated that Diana Kajmakovic is “a flagrant example of a corrupt state
prosecutor of BiH, connected to criminal organizations.”
It is added that “in support of drug dealers and other
criminals, Kajmakovic helped conceal evidence, prevent criminal prosecution,
and in other ways assisted illegal activities in exchange for personal gain.”
She also, it is stated, “tried to block the investigation regarding individuals
from the criminal milieu with whom she apparently cooperated.”
On September 27th, the Office of the Disciplinary Prosecutor
of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC) of BiH announced that
they would investigate the reasons given by the OFAC, but that Kajmakovic would
not be suspended for the time being.
Trials of drug traffickers
Kajmakovic, after working in the municipal court and
prosecutor’s office and the Cantonal Prosecutor’s Office in Sarajevo, became
the prosecutor of the State Prosecutor’s Office of BiH in 2008.
She is best known to the public in BiH for the case “Zijad
Turkovic and others”, who were sentenced to a total of 95 years in prison in
2015 as members of a criminal organization before the Court of BiH.
Kajmakovic was also the prosecutor in the trial against the
brothers Jerko and Slavko Ivankovic Lijanovic, and several directors of
their companies. This is a family that owned the meat industry from Siroki
Brijeg, in the south of BiH. They were accused of money laundering and tax
evasion.
The first-instance verdict sentenced them to 52 years and
eight months in prison, as well as a fine of around two million euros. In
addition, they were ordered to return the illegally acquired property benefit
of around six million euros.
The Appellate Panel of the Court of BiH fully acquitted them
in 2019, because part of the material evidence was declared illegal.
Political appointment of Kajmakovic’s husband
According to the annual financial report she submitted,
Kajmakovic owns a house and land in Sarajevo, and an apartment in Dubrovnik,
Croatia. Her husband Armin owns two apartments in Sarajevo.
The Government of the Federation of BiH (FBiH) appointed her
husband as the director of Sarajevo International Airport, at the suggestion of
the political party Union for a Better Future.
In the report of the Temporary Investigative Commission,
which operated within the framework of the BiH Parliament, and whose goal was
to determine the situation in the BiH judiciary, Kajmakovic was cited, among other
things, as an example of a possible conflict of interest, Radio Slobodna Evropa
writes.
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