In a troubling revelation from the heart of the Balkans, a major investigative report has exposed how organized crime syndicates systematically exploited institutional weaknesses in Bosnia and Herzegovina to forge identities and obtain legitimate passports. The scheme, detailed by the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIN), shows that dozens of violent criminals linked to the region’s most powerful gangs-namely the Kavač and Škaljari clans-used stolen identities, corrupt insiders, and systemic flaws to operate under false names for nearly a decade.

Between 2013 and 2022, at least 60 members of these criminal groups successfully obtained Bosnian passports under fraudulent identities. These documents enabled them to travel freely across international borders, evade law enforcement, and commit crimes under clean identities. Many of these identities belonged to unsuspecting Bosnian citizens, particularly those who had emigrated and never applied for local ID cards-making them ideal targets for identity theft.

These criminal actors relied not merely on forgery or counterfeit documents, but on an alarming level of insider support. With the help of corrupt police officers and civil servants, they accessed legitimate government databases and manipulated state records to obtain real identity documents based on stolen personal data from unsuspecting Bosnian citizens-typically individuals who had emigrated decades ago and never applied for updated identity papers. These victims were unaware that their names were being used to commit international crimes, while their lives were turned upside down when border alerts and criminal charges began appearing against them.

At the center of this scandal lies a uniquely vulnerable state infrastructure. Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country still governed under the complex arrangements established by the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, is divided into two autonomous entities and one district-each with its own administrative structures and minimal inter-agency coordination. This fragmented governance model has made Bosnia’s institutions particularly susceptible to infiltration and exploitation by organized crime.

Bosnia’s vulnerability stems from its deeply fragmented and inefficient administrative........

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