Mirela Turulja calls it her dream job.
For 12 years, she's worked in a state-run home for the aging in Sarajevo, and she loves
it ... even though there are far too few staff to take care of the 400 residents.
Mirela regularly works over 11 hours a day.
She's highly qualified, but the job pays just 500 euros a month.
"You have to finish nursing school, and that's not easy.
And if you want to land a spot to study there, you have to have excellent grades in school.
Then the training program takes four years to complete.
Five actually...because when you're through with classes you still have a year-long internship
and then final exams."
Because the training program they go through is so rigorous, nursing staff from Bosnia
are also sought after in other countries.
Mirela says some colleagues work in Germany.
But now a scandal has tarnished the country's reputation for nursing excellence.
Investigative journalist Azra Omerovic discovered that several schools in Bosnia have sold diplomas
to people with no training at all.
She uncovered the fraud by posing as an interested client.
"I called him and asked if he could help me out with retraining.
He said sure, and we met up the next day -- right here, where we're sitting now.
He told me to bring 2,500 Bosnian marks and my school-leaving certificate, and that then
he'd be able to organize everything.
It took exactly 17 days for me to get the diploma after that first phone conversation.
And I never set foot in a school, never mind taking an exam of some kind."
Omerović and her editorial department secretly filmed her interactions with the fraudster,
and confronted him when he gave her the diploma.
The employee in the area of public health refused to name any backers.
And so far, he hasn't lost his job.
News like that makes Mirela angry.
She knows better than anyone how even experienced nurses can make a mistake -- with potentially
fatal consequences.
Untrained staff who've bought their diplomas could cause tremendous harm.
"It's playing with people's lives!
This is a job with a huge amount of responsibility!
If you do something like that -- an unqualified person taking responsibility for someone's
life -- I could never do that!
Why on earth would someone do something like that?"
Azra Omerović and her colleagues discovered the diploma she bought wasn't just a cheap
copy of a real one.
It included certificates and documentation backing it up.
It says Omerović trained at a nursing school for two years, and there were even records
of grades she supposedly got in courses.
A foreign employer would never have been able to determine it wasn't authentic.
"I'm afraid the German authorities are going hit the wall -- the wall of organized crime
in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
If the Germans want to verify the diplomas or the schools that issue them...or the people
that come to Germany with them to work...then they're going to have problems with the relevant
Bosnian authorities.
Why?
Because the Bosnian authorities are part of the criminal system."
The scandal is a disaster for nursing schools that play by the rules.
The reputation for good work they worked hard to achieve is being ruined by corrupt competitors.
"This is pointless!
We study in this school for four long years to take a diploma and hopefully find a job
in the field.
Then they come and get the same thing in two weeks.
It just doesn't make sense!"
The police informed the state prosecutor's office in Sarajevo about the case four months
ago.
So far, it hasn't reacted.
Politicians are demanding diplomas be examined for authenticity, but not an investigation
into the schools that issued them illegally.
Mirela Turulja says she's never considered taking a more lucrative position abroad.
But for other graduates of Bosnian nursing schools who dream of a job in Western Europe,
the fraud has made landing one a much tougher proposition.