Members of police agencies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, both those at the state level and those from BiH’s Republika Srpska (RS) entity, use the Sky application to communicate and even cooperate with criminals, RS Interior Minister Dragan Lukac said on Tuesday.

“We are working intensively on the fight against organized crime, which has so far led to the arrest of dozens of criminals in the RS. We should definitely make use of the current possibilities that have opened up for us by revealing content from the encrypted Sky application with the help of Europol,” he said.

The BiH Prosecutor's Office previously confirmed that it has opened a case related to certain officials in the police and security agencies in BiH over alleged illicit communication with criminals via the application.

“Unfortunately, we have a number of police officers not only from the RS Ministry of the Interior but also from other police agencies in BiH who have had some cooperation with criminal circles, giving them support but also cooperating with them, even committing certain crimes with them,” he said, adding that his ministry will continue to work intensively on breaking up all those criminal groups.

There are still many problems in the investigation, he said, explaining that it has been used for almost 10 years to exchange a vast amount of information, with those involved using code names.

Dozens of arrests of criminals related to drug trafficking were already made after the data from the Sky application became available to the police in BiH.