Journalist Nino Bilajac started receiving threats following his investigative story of five Sarajevo municipality heads and the Mayor who failed to report their property to the state election watchdog before the election, which was their legal requirement.

Centre for Investigative Reporting's (CIN) Nino Bolajac told N1 that his story dealt with 11 officials, five of which failed to comply with the law and did not report their property to the Central Election Commission (CIK) prior to the election.

The heads of municipalities are Ibrahim Hadzibajric, Ibro Berilo, Nedzad Koldzo, Nedzad Ajnadzic, Senaid Memic, and Mayor Abdulah Skaka.

“The law stipulates that they had to report all their property and the property of their close relatives, parents, children and spouses. They failed to report some of their property and hid id, despite being obliged to do so by the law. They reported their property only partially to the CIK. The CIK as an institution hasn't the means to investigate these reports, but the Anti Corruption Office has,” Bilajac said, adding that in case someone fails to report their property as they did, they would be fined for not complying with the law.

The journalist told N1 that two to three weeks before the publication of his text, the CIN sent interview requests to the said five which all but Nedzad Ajnadzic declined.

“Nedzad Ajnadzic said the Office was not credible for him, despite the fact that all the heads of municipalities and their parties voted in favour of this law,” Bilajac noted.

According to him, his colleagues and he gathered evidence for this story for over a year and they started writing it some two to three months ago. All the people from the story had the opportunity to justify their actions in interviews – but he added they all refused to speak to him and his colleagues.

After the story, threats started coming in, he noted.

“There aren't the type of threats where someone would threaten us with violence, but there were some situations where we felt uncomfortable, we were disrespected which sometimes can get even worse than receiving an actual threat,” Bilajac pointed out.

“Speaking at TVSA just hours after the story was published, Senaid Memic told a number of untruths and insults on the account of CIN journalists. There are some other issues, like the anchor in the studio who did not approach the situation as a colleague journalist, but she was actually sneering, laughing and commenting on this with him.”

Bilajac concluded it is important that the story was published and that they proved that these six people did not fully report their property.
“Some of them don't even recognise the laws their party delegates voted for,” he pointed out.