Photo: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia

Bosnia’s Foreign Ministry on Monday confirmed that Milica Markovic, an MP in the House of Representatives and a member of parliament’s delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe was being investigated for possible corruption.

The ministry said an investigative body was formed in June 2017 by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe to collect information on “possible corrupt actions by three members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, one of whom is Markovic”.

Markovic is a member of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, the ruling party in the Serb-dominated entity, Republika Srpska.

Last year, media reported that Markovic had been engaged in the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan – but had been very biased in her reports in favour of Azerbaijan.

Media reports have accused her of taking bribes from Azerbaijan, influencing her reporting on the dispute between the two former Soviet republics on the breakaway Nagorno karabakh region.

The investigative body, which has significant power and a special budget and whose work is independent of the Committee of Ministers and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, should submit the first report by mid-2018, the ministry said.

The foreign ministry said it wished to inform the public about the case in light of what it called her “unreasonable attacks on [Foreign] Minister [Igor] Crnadak, and especially because of her inaccurate claim that she is not the subject of any investigation by the Council of Europe”.

Several days ago, Markovic said that Crnadak was only a Bosnian minister but not a Serb – referring to Crnadak’s membership of the Party of Democratic Progress, the opposition party in Republika Srpska.