In 1997, a skinny young man with dyed blond hair stood calmly, with a smile, next to his mother, Mirjana Marković, dressed in black, in the moments when his father, Slobodan Milošević, became the president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Two and a half decades later, Marko Milošević, somewhat taller and with gray hair, appeared in public after many years, also near his father - a monument to the former president of Serbia and the FRY was unveiled in Moscow.
"We were a rehearsal of what happened in Russia, the Yugoslav crisis and wars are the same, this in Ukraine is just an accelerated version", he said in Russian, in front of the Serbian flag.
"Unfortunately, we lost the battle, but I hope we didn't lose the war. The Russians learned a lesson from our mistakes and fate, and we will win," added Milošević, filmed in the company of the leader of the motorcycle group. Night Wolves Alexander Zaldastanov, allegedly a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Shortly after October 5, 2000, when his father was ousted from power, Marko Milošević arrived in Russia, where he received refugee status and later citizenship.
"He was a typical product of the XNUMXs, the son of a man on whom the entire regime rested and someone who used his father's power to make terrible money," said Žarko Korać, Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia in Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic's cabinet, for the BBC in Serbian.
He was known as a car lover, the owner of the Madonna disco in Požarevac, then one of the largest and most popular in the country, as well as for Bambiland, an amusement park built during the NATO bombing in 1999, which is now abandoned, overgrown with weeds and rust.
"While Mira Marković created a false image of him as a modest young man who carries suitcases and struggles to survive, he was involved in the lucrative smuggling of cigarettes, where, at a time when people had a salary of two German marks, they earned millions," adds Korać. .
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Proceedings for alleged cigarette smuggling were never initiated against him.
The media write that Marko Milošević is on Interpol's wanted list, but the BBC did not receive confirmation of that information either from Interpol or from the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs until the text was published.
After the fall of his father from power, two court proceedings were initiated: the first, due to the incident from 2000 in Požarevac, when two members of Otpor, the movement against Milosevic, were beaten - it became obsolete in 2013.
The second, known as the "Chainsaw" case, when the resistance fighter Zoran Milovanović prosecuted him for beating him and threatening to "cut him up with a chainsaw and throw him in Morava". it was suspended when Milovanović withdrew from the proceedings.
"Due to those incidents, Slobodan Milošević began to lose support even in his native Požarevac, which was their backbone, so he scheduled early elections in 2000, just to show everyone that the people are with him," says Ivan Marović, one of the leaders Resistance, for the BBC in Serbian.
Milošević lost those elections, and Marović believes that "Marko overthrew his father".
"It all happened because of his arrogant behavior... He started a chain reaction."
Although "arrogance" is the word Korać also uses to describe him, in an interview with Adam Lebor, the author of the biography of Slobodan Milosevic, Mira Marković described her son as a "vulnerable" and "romantic" man who "always helped others".
He is "not loved only by his father's enemies", she rated for Vreme in 2001.
"He is the son of Slobodan Milošević, and that is the greatest honor he could have," Uroš Šuvaković, a former official of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and an associate of the former Serbian president, told the BBC briefly, refusing to say anything more about his son. .
Childhood: Cars and "pretty like a doll, on dad"
Marko Milošević was born on July 3, 1974 in Belgrade, a few years before his father became the director of Beobanka, one of the largest banks in Yugoslavia at the time.
"Like many children of successful parents, Marija and Marko lived with privileges... They never lacked for anything," writes Adam Lebor in Milošević's biography.
Milošević was "proud of Marko", writes Lebor, and his mother Mira "in the classic Balkan way suffocated him with maternal love and admiration".
He went to a private school, and Lebor describes him as a "very spoiled" and "selfish child" who, according to his parents, "could never do anything wrong."
He was thin since he was a child, which he talked about with his father in March 1997, when he called him from Italy with the idea of going for aesthetic surgery on his ears, which was recorded by the Croatian intelligence service. tapping Milošević's phone.
Slobodan: Wait a minute, let me explain something to you. Do you know why it looks like that to you now? Does it look like that to you? You're terribly thin and every donkey at your age looks like that, and as soon as you fill out a little and stabilize, everything will fall into place. I also looked worse when I was skinny.
Marko: Well, look, I agree, but I have no intention of beautifying myself in 15 years.
Slobodan: Marko, 'I'm going to tell you that the consequences of thinness can't be done like that, it only appears to you because you're terribly thin. And the chicken has a bit of muscle behind its ears to be eaten. And you only have a bone, you understand, therefore any violence against nature is stupid, and secondly, you are as pretty as a doll, like a dad. Don't worry, there!
Source: Time
At the age of 16, he moved to Požarevac, where he spent a lot of time as a child.
"I have a different, more dynamic temperament... I'm not used to living with a family and people my age would probably do the same - I can't combine the nice things in life, like going out, with being a good student," he said in an interview from 1993, according to Lebor.
He had complete freedom there, and the only thing that bothered him was the constant presence of bodyguards, guards and police in front of the house.
His father forced him to study - his mother was much more lenient - fearing that Marko would fall into bad company in Požarevac, writes Lebor.
However, as he states, the president's son will soon "grow into a troubled young man".
"At one point, the stories about him became much darker," says Korać.
Coming of age confirmed the two main interests of Marko Milošević - cars and weapons.
His favorite gun was a Magnum 357, and his car was a Peugeot 205.
"It's the car of my life. I treat him like other people treat a dog, a pet," he said then.
He called weapons a hobby.
"You know how children love guns and as time goes by, some people lose that feeling, some don't... I have a passion for it," Milošević told Vreme.
"I go everywhere without security. I'm not isolated, I've never had a problem."
Youth: War and hot water in the pool
At the end of the eighties, the political rise of his father begins, who first takes over the Union of Communists of Serbia, and then becomes the first man of Serbia.
The disintegration of the country in a bloody war - first in Slovenia and Croatia, and then in multi-ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina, where it will gain the most terrible momentum - soon began.
At that time, Marko Milošević started racing with Vladimir Kovačević, known as Vlada Tref, one of the most famous Belgrade drivers at the time.
On his 20th birthday, July 4, 1994, driving a BMW M3, he won first place in the race in Kraljevo, and organized a celebratory party in a cafe in Pozarevac.
"Early this morning, very early, with the first rays of the sun, my son burst into the room with a big smile: 'Mom, I'm 20 years and one day old now,' he said," Mira Marković wrote about that day.
It is also written about Marko that he is "incorrigibly cheerful", that he "walks on clouds" and that he will "never grow up".
"He will be young forever, like Peter Pan".
In the same year, Marko also opened the Madonna disco in Požarevac, where the main folk stars of the era performed, as well as a bakery, and he wanted to open a luxury maternity hospital, which made him father replied.
His mother said in 2001 that he earned the money for the disco "dealing with motoring".
Slobodan Milošević was asked the same thing in 2000, and he replied that his son was everything in life "made with my own hands".
His answer that Marko "carried crates of empty and full bottles to one bar for 5.000 dinars a month because that's the kind of person he is, because he always wanted to be independent", was often quoted by Milošević's opponents.
Lebor, like other journalists, states that Marko started smuggling cigarettes in the mid-1990s, with the help of Mihalj Kertes, the director of the Customs Administration at the time and a confidant of his parents.
"Marko controlled the importation of the Philip Morris brand of cigarettes... Each truck brought in about $250.000 - not everything went to him, but there was enough left over," Lebor writes.
The same is stated by Radomir Marković, the former head of the State Security.
"It was a well-known fact in police and security circles that Marko Milošević had close ties with certain criminal structures from the country and abroad, and that with the help of the cigarette smuggling he ran, he became one of the biggest dealers of these goods, earning millions in foreign exchange income." stated Marković.
At the age of 22, he moved into a new house with a swimming pool in Požarevac. when he called his father on the phone.
Marko: Do you know that the water in my pool is 38 degrees?
Slobodan: You're a fool, man. It's unhealthy.
Marko: Well, never mind. It should be 18. That's the real deal.
Slobodan: Well, it can't be over 30, bro, what are you kidding.
Marko: What not to do? I bathe at 40!
Slobodan Milošević hands the phone to his wife Miri.
Mira: Mili, my sweet home...
Marko: I heated the water in the pool to 38 degrees. You know how wonderful it is.
Mira: Tell mom what are you doing?
Marko: Mom, I haven't left the house for 72 hours.
Mira: Oh dear, wonderful. Is the magic there?
Marko: And you know what? I concluded that in these conditions you can't have no appetite or insomnia, which are my former problems. First, I'm going to gain weight here, because I eat like an abyss. I can eat when you want.
Another thing, I can't have insomnia and I can't get bored because I have so many forms of animation it's wonderful. I don't leave the house at all. Cica, you know how lovely this underfloor heating is in the bathrooms and all around. There's no such thing as you step on your bare foot and your foot sticks. It's not blowing, it's not cold, it's beautiful...
Mira: (laughs) Enjoy honey!
Demonstrations and the "chainsaw case"
Lebor writes that Marko Milošević spent the bombing in Požarevac, wearing a uniform.
"When it was announced that there would be a bombing, Marko immediately said that he would go to Kosovo," says Mira Marković in an interview for the book, calling her son a "patriot."
"I told him why would you go there, you will die... Volunteer, but if you have to die, do it here, not in Kosovo."
Half of the money he earned in Požarevac he returned to the city and invested in the hospital, she claimed.
In July 1999, at the opening of Bambiland, an amusement park built during the bombing. the entire state leadership came, the party leadership of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and the Yugoslav Left (JUL), as well as pop stars.
"In the beginning it was famous, people all over Serbia thought it was like Disneyland - but actually it's a slightly bigger amusement park," Momčilo Veljković from Požarevac stated earlier for the BBC in Serbian.
Veljković was a member of Otpor, a student organization founded in 1998 that grew into a civil movement against the regime of Slobodan Milošević.
"We had the pleasure of decorating Bambiland with the fist of Resistance, stencils.
"They would immediately engage to have it all painted over - it was a kind of game," Veljković said.
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Lebor writes that at the end of the nineties, the regime of Slobodan Milošević cracked, and above all in the cities in the interior, where the anger of citizens spread more and more.
That's how it was in Požarevac, a city that "Marko ran as a personal fiefdom," he states in the text.
"It was very dangerous for young people - it's a small place and everyone knows everything, so there were big threats," said Slavoljub Matić, the mayor of Požarevac after the fall of Milošević, in an interview for Lebor's book.
"Marko did not have a political position, but he was the son of the president and he could do whatever he wanted... His associates beat and intimidated the activists of the Resistance."
Veljković, along with two other resisters, were beaten in the center of Požarevac on May 2, 2000.
That case never received a judicial epilogue.
First, the Prosecutor's Office twice refused to initiate proceedings against Marko Milošević and his associates, only for the private lawsuit to end in statute of limitations, with the obligation of the beaten to pay court costs.
Ivan Marović remembers that May 2 well.
"At that time, we had a serious mobilization of citizens, there were protests, all kinds of things happened, but we were all exhausted," he recalls.
"That day I woke up and said to myself 'brother, I can't do it anymore, politics will eat my youth', I was thinking of leaving everything, I had enough of the Resistance and everything".
At that moment, they called him from Požarevac and told him that the resistance fighters had been beaten and that "Marko Milošević pulled out a chainsaw on Zoran Milovanović".
"Marko came with a chainsaw. He said 'what is it, traitor?' Scum. You will not be the first or the last whom I cut up and threw into Morava," said Milanović in an interview with American media, writes Lebor.
"He put the saw next to my head and turned it on, which lasted a few seconds, then he turned it off, put it on the counter and told his men to take me away... I started crying."
However, his mother later said that her son "did no harm to anyone - on the contrary, he helped everyone he could", emphasizing "Mark's contribution to raising cultural standards in Požarevac".
The police and judiciary in the city, which until then were on the side of the regime, did not want to cooperate with them after that, says Marović.
"They just didn't want to be a part of it, to participate in that hogwash, and they left him because of Mark's arrogance.
"That Pozarevac incident showed everything naked - it was clear how everything really looks, how that family functions and how Pozarevac is actually their family."
All this, he points out, "gave new energy" to him and other resisters at the moment of saturation.
"With his own arrogance, Marko Milošević set in motion a series of events that actually doomed his father - his son destroyed him."
In the elections in September, Milošević was defeated by Vojislav Koštunica, the candidate of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), a broad alliance of parties.
Leaving the country
Meanwhile, Marko Milošević married Milica Gajić and had a son, who bears his name.
They remained in Serbia after Marko left for Moscow, where Borislav Milošević, his father's brother, was ambassador.
"According to Kertes, then they gave him some money - in the decision to open the investigation it was stated that it was 1,5 million marks," Tom Phil, who defended Slobodan Milošević before the Hague Tribunal, where he was tried for war crimes during the 1990s.
"That was the biggest indictment against him and Mira Marković - abuse of an official position or a responsible person," adds Fila.
Slobodan Milošević was arrested in March 2001 and soon extradited to The Hague, where he died in 2006, before the verdict was passed.
What Marko Milošević does today is not known - no one even knew what he looked like for a long time, until he appeared at the unveiling of the monument to his father.
Milica's wife, from whom, according to the media, he divorced, said in an interview in 2001 that Marko Milošević "is not a millionaire".
"I don't know what the criteria of wealth are, believe me. I can't answer that question, I don't know what being a rich man means to you." she stated.
Šuvaković states that he saw Marko Milošević "once or twice in his life".
"Instead of asking me about the opening of the monument to Milošević in Moscow and why it was not opened in Belgrade and Podgorica, you are asking me about his son Slobodan Milošević, who is alive, in full form and can speak for himself," he said briefly to BBC.
Korac says that he hasn't heard anything about Milosevic for a long time, but that "he is certainly rich, wherever he is".
Lawyer Fil remembers only one telephone conversation with him, when Slobodan Milošević was arrested."
"He asked me 'is my father going out tomorrow'. I told him not to go out, and he said to me - 'well, what kind of lawyer does he want'."
Lebor writes that Milosevic spent some time in Almaty, a city in Kazakhstan.
"Many did not forgive him for his success because he was the president's son and accused him of many small and big ugly things, none of which he did." repeated Mira Marković several times in an interview for Vreme from 2001.
At one point in that conversation, her phone rang.
When she answered, her voice immediately became soft, throbbing.
"Hello honey, hello honey... Daddy is fine, we drank coffee, he was walking today," she said to Mark, who is calling from "an Asian republic of the former Soviet Union."
She quickly warned him not to call every day.
It's expensive, he says.
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