A word is enough to the wise (CJA: part 9)

A CORPORATE-JUDICIAL AFFAIR IN BiH part 9

In the previous eight parts of the series “A corporate-judicial affair in BiH” we presented in detail the corrupt actions of the Court in Mostar. Court officials violated all laws and codes of judicial ethics by conspiring with one of the parties in the case at hand. We called that party the “local builder”. The Court enabled the local builder to commit criminal act of fraud against the other party in the case, the “international bank”, thereby causing the latter several tens of millions of BAM in damages.

The entire timeline of undue delays in the case, based on exact data excerpted from judicial documents can be found here.

In the text below, we continue to use pseudonyms to avoid marketing. Therefore, we refer to the party favored by the Court in Mostar as the “local builder”,  and the party discriminated by the Court – the “international bank”.

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This text owes its title “A word is enough to the wise”, to one of the judges in the Municipal court in Mostar, Nina Ratkušić, who in her writing to Net Consulting finished her statement with the phrase: “A word is enough to the wise.” We absolutely agree. This title seemed very effective in that it paints a full picture of the state of affairs in the case presented, a case which we publicly analysed, presenting arguments that prove neglect and unprofessionalism in the conduct of the above-mentioned judge and more generally, by the Court in Mostar. What is more, considering the scandals that burden it almost on a daily basis, this phrase also sums up a correct diagnosis of the state of the entire BiH judiciary.  

After we published the 8th part of the series, activity in the case at hand exploded, so we decided to devote this text to current events’ analysis.

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FIRST – On 21.01.2020., Net Consulting received a letter from the Office of the disciplinary prosecutor of the HJPC, signed by the disciplinary prosecutor Aldijana Porča. She informed us that they investigated our disciplinary complaint against the judges in the case at hand, for obstruction of the counter-enforcement order, and that disciplinary charges have been filed against two of the judges:

56. a) against the judge Ognjenka Škoro in the Municipal Court in Mostar, for disciplinary violation of the article 56. point 23. of the Law on HJPC BiH: “for any other behavior representing a serious violation of official duties or that bring into question the trust by the public in the impartiality and credibility of the judiciary”;

56. b) against the judge Nina Ratkušić in the Municipal court in Mostar, for disciplinary violation of the article 56. point 8. of the Law on HJPC in BiH: “neglect or disregard in exercising official duties”.

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SECOND – Immediately after the first letter, on 23.01.2020. Net Consulting received another letter from the judge Nina Ratkušić from the Municipal court in Mostar, in which she informs us of the following:

1. a) that she is not in position to demand retraction of our public reports with reference to to this case until the HJPC consents to publish a denial. She attached a copy of the request for consent files with the HJPC (below we discuss the allegations in this request as well);

1. b) that we have been aware she has been on an extended medical leave, and that she would submit medical documentation to counter any allegations that her illness is feigned. She also demanded that we not publish any of the medical documents, once she submits them, as those are personal and confidential (Net Consulting is not aware of any suspicions that her specific illness is feigned. So, in that context, we would like to hereby ask Judge Nina Ratkušić to not submit any medical documentation to us, as we are neither experts, nor authorized to interpret medical findings);

1. c) she also invited us to attend all the disciplinary proceedings related to her work on this case (we are grateful for the invitation, and will gladly attend after we confirm that under current HJPC rules of procedure we would be allowed to attend in service of the public);

1. d) she directed our attention to certain facts in the articles that are taken out of context. She finished her statement with following:

“I will only direct your attention to the fact that the case file was assigned to me on 30.10.2018, after filing of certain objections, which were not recorded as objections, but as complaints, which was a violation of regulations (and that nobody has as of yet been held responsible for those disciplinary violations). The complaint against myself for failure to act was delivered to the ODP in November 2018. This was only a few days after the case was assigned to me, which case I was not in a position to oversee. A detailed report on this is forthcoming after I receive HJPC’s consent. If you compare the dates of the file assignment and the date that the complaint was filed, I think everything will be clear (a word is enough for the wise).” (author’s comment: the judge was likely referring to a denial instead of report, as that is the request she had filed).

We would like to highlight this last paragraph because in it the judge states one of the reasons behind her failure to act. Namely, she alleges someone had already filed complaints as “submissions”, rather than “complaints”. This is a clear example of something we have written about extensively in our expose, namely, the ingenious tactics of the Municipal court in Mostar to invent ways to delay the counter-enforcement procedure, successfully for 26 months already. This is in spite of the fact that by its nature, this is an urgent procedure. Second, when the same court had processed the original enforcement order in favor of the local builder, they issued their decision very efficiently within 30 days.

It must be said that despite her claims to the contrary, there is additional evidence which proves that judge Nina Ratkušić was very much aware of the complaint much earlier than she alleges.  Namely, on 19.07.2019. she had sent a letter to the “international bank” in which she specifically requested an answer to the complaint. After that letter she commenced a several-months-long obstruction of the decision-making process regarding the complaint. The document in question (letter) is evidence in the complaint allegations, and we presented it in the second article of the series, which was published on 26.11.2019. It is available here.

In her statement, the judge alleges that nobody was held responsible disciplinary for the mishandling of classification of case files as complaints or submissions. If that is the case, we must ask the judge if she already filed a complaint of her own with the ODP because of her suspicions, like Net Consulting had filed a complaint against her for her disciplinary violations? If she did not file a disciplinary complaint, despite her duty to do so, then we can freely conclude that this justification is just another in a long line of unethical and irresponsible excuses put forward by judge Ratkušić. If the judge is pressured by the judiciary’s cultural defect – the culture of non-confrontation of colleagues, we would be happy to file a complaint on her behalf if she submits relevant information to us.

With regard to the allegation that the complaint against her had been filed only a few days after the case file was originally transferred to her on 30.10.2018, we regret to inform the judge that this is absolutely not true. Namely, the “international bank” filed their complaint on 28.1.2019. (3 months after the case file was assigned to her), and Net Consulting filed its complaint against the judge on 18.11. 2019, not 2018.  In other words, one year after she had taken over the case. Using this invalid argument about the date of the assignment of case files and the date of submission of the complaint, the judge’s sends us her final message: “A word is enough to the wise”.

This is the reason why we gave our support to the phrase at the beginning of this text. We agree. This word IS enough for the wise.

As a bonus, there was a general illogical aspect of her letter. Namely, the judge begins by informing us that she is not allowed to issue denials without HJPC’s consent, which she had not yet received at the time of her writing. However, the judge then goes on to informing Net Consulting about her denial in the body of the writing regardless, alleging that the statements in the article were not truthful. Still without the consent of the HJPC.

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THIRD – The request for consent, filed with the HJPC by judge Nina Ratkušić, who also forwarded a copy of it to us, contains a handful of interesting and shocking details as well:

21. a) The judge claims that during a telephone call on 21.1.2020. she was informed that the reports by Net Consulting about irregularities in the case at hand were one of the agenda items at the regular session of the HJPC, but that she had no knowledge of the details of the discussion.

(Net Consulting welcomes HJPC’s handling of the issue of illegal behavior of the Municipal court in Mostar. If the facts that Net Consulting exposed to the public, and which are double-checked and triple-checked and confirmed in documentation, were responsible for initiating HJPC’s action, then we do have a lot of reasons to be satisfied);

1. b) Judge also alleges that her illness was caused due to systematic mobbing at work by former, but also by the current President of the court (author’s comment: Divna Bošnjak), since her first day on the job. She also alleges filing a request for protection from discrimination, and that she never received a response from the HJPC.

1. c) The judge alleges further that one form of mobbing was in fact the manner in which the case file was assigned to her. Namely, she claims to have been misled into believing that this case file was assigned to her in a systematic order. Instead, the case was assigned to her after the original judge Ognjenka Škoro requested that the case be reassigned. Judge Nina Ratkušić alleges that the reassignment procedure was done improperly;

1. d) The judge further claims that the disciplinary complaint against her is a continuation of discriminatory treatment. She also wrote about having been informed of yet another reassignment of the case file, this time to the judge Bajro Avdić.

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The above-mentioned events are an introduction into the denouement of this corporate-judicial affair. They confirm our previous findings and present new lessons learned.

Namely, it was correct to identify the Office of the Disciplinary Prosecutor as the key link in the system of building the ethics and integrity throughout the judiciary in BiH. As long as they do their job, things move forward, and if they avoid doing their job prosecuting unethical judges and prosecutors, then the pandemic of unprofessionalism and lawlessness permeates all judicial institutions and levels.

You’ll notice that judge Nina Ratkušić became concerned about Net Consulting’s writing only after she found out that the Office of the Disciplinary Prosecutor had filed a disciplinary complaint against her. It was at that point that she was suddenly bothered by Net Consulting’s publishing of 8 articles, i.e. public reports, about irregularities in the judicial process. Prior to that, she had never reacted to our texts. Logic dictates that a person who performs his/her official duties correctly, would react immediately after the first text, if they doubted the veracity of the claims. They would not wait until 8 articles are published, which meant more than two months of public reporting before reacting.

We can deduce from all of the above that the unprofessional and unethical judicial officials in BiH are not at all worried about public exposure of their misdeeds by journalists and other public service employees, just as long as their colleagues, the criminal and disciplinary prosecutors don’t touch them. There are many examples in BiH, which clearly show that many of them have grown completely indifferent to public criticism. But, it seems that when official institutions initiate formal proceedings and file disciplinary and criminal charges, then the judicial swamp goes up in a metaphoric storm. At that point, previously well-coordinated colleagues start accusing one another of wrongdoing.

This corporate-judicial affair and public scandal sends a good message to all judges and prosecutors in BiH – No court case can be handled unprofessionally and hidden in the drawers to collect dust. There is a so-called new “high representative” on the scene in BiH, in the form of public reputation. It has the power to generate sufficient concern and risk to all those who believe that unethical actions can be kept inside the dark boudoirs of deep justice. The dark hallways of a corrupt system where the so-called colleagues protect one another and cover for each other, all in service of damaging the citizens and parties in individual cases processed.

This example clearly shows that democracy is slow, but it is attainable. After that, we can reasonably expect even the appearance of justice.

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End of part nine.

The sequel to the story will be published on 9^th February 2020.

* Net Consulting d.o.o. monitors and analyses business processes and practice, conflicts in business relationships, administrative judicial processes, and identifies irregularities, which damage legitimate and legal corporate interests of clients. This text is published with consent of the damaged party in this case. Net Consulting d.o.o. confirmed the veracity of all claims in the text with secondary documentation and other material proof.