Stanko Subotić Canet, a businessman from Switzerland, born in the village of Kalinovik near the Serbian town of Ub, the public first learned shortly after the fall of Milošević in the XNUMXs when the Belgrade tabloid Panorama, founded with Bosnian-Serbian capital and edited by Dragan J. Vučićević, today's editor-in-chief of the Provučić tabloid Informer, spread the story that the then Prime Minister of Serbia Zoran Đinđić flew on a state trip to Dubai on his private plane.
It turned out that Panorama was created mainly to promote that story, because after only a few issues it went out of business.
It was one of the first post-October XNUMX affairs. I then met Đinđić at a humanitarian dinner in Princess Ljubica's Konak and asked him - where did the prime minister come from on the plane of some exotic businessman - and he, asking that the conversation be kept "off the record", said that Subotic was "our man" who helped the Serbian opposition under Milošević, that at that time he could not come to Serbia due to threats of arrest, and that he does not see anything wrong with the fact that the state actually saved money with this "donation", because Cane did not ask for any favors in return.
After that, Subotić became a frequent character on the pages of scandalous media in Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro, where he was accused of smuggling, murders and anything and everything, but all those stories "legally" fell into the water the other day when he finally became " a free man".
The indictment accused him of being the head of a group that smuggled cigarettes during 1995 and 1996 and that in this way damaged the budget for 28 million German marks and six million US dollars, but the court failed to prove Subotic's guilt.
After eight years of trial, the Appellate Court in Belgrade acquitted him of responsibility for all the acts: those from 1995 are absolutely obsolete, while there was no evidence for the acts from 1996.
'Proximity to the authorities'
A large part of the Serbian public interprets the release of Subotic as a fact of closeness with the current authorities in Serbia. There is no evidence for such speculation beyond the level of "rumors", although somehow it has become a rule that wherever there is smoke, there is also fire, and there is also Caneta.
Except in the case of massive cigarette smuggling in the nineties, where the court concluded that there was smoke, but no Canet.
For example, at the time when Tomislav Nikolić and Aleksandar Vučić left Šešelj's radicals in 2008, the general secretary of the Serbian Radical Party, Elena Božić - Italian, claimed that SRS had information about the meeting between Vučić and Subotic in Moscow, where he allegedly received a monetary donation from him. for a new party, today's ruling Serbian Progressive Party.
The media also wrote that Nikolić and Vučić met with Subotic and Milo Đukanović at the "Ric" hotel in Paris in 2007.
Tomislav Nikolić said that he and Vučić were in Paris on some business at the time at the "Ric" hotel, but that they met Đukanović by chance.
He added that in the hotel "in whose foyer and restaurants there are always at least a thousand people", while they were passing by a table, Đukanović got up and "they greeted each other and talked for a minute or two".
"There were several people sitting at his table and I didn't look at them," added Nikolić. It turned out that even Vučić did not look at who was sitting at Đukanović's table.
Again, Vučić was one of the people who in the early XNUMXs publicly accused Subotić of the murder of police official Radovan Stojičić Badža, and he was also a reviewer of Vojislav Šešelj's book "Stanko Subotić - Cane Žabac, King of the Tobacco Mafia".
Due to his closeness to Djindjic, Cane was the ideal target of the post-October XNUMX opposition in Serbia, because through him they wanted to prove the connections of the murdered prime minister with people from the "gray zone" and in some way justify the assassination.
Vučić's archenemy only in opposition
Over time, however, Vučić's infatuation with Canet somehow subsided and he no longer mentioned him.
Cane was Vučić's archenemy only when he was in the opposition, and since coming to power it has become another businessman, Miroslav Mišković.
Even the other day, Vučić did not want to comment on Subotic's acquittal, apparently because he does not interfere in the work of the judiciary, although the Serbian prime minister comments on various trials and arrests whenever he gets the chance. Let's say, Miroslav Mišković, but then, I guess, he doesn't interfere in the work of the judiciary.
When Šešelj left Scheveningen last year, he explained Vučić's sudden turn from his perspective.
"Milo Đukanović financed the coming to power of the Serbian Progressive Party, and previously he gave large financial incentives to Tomislav Nikolić and Aleksandar Vučić to break away and attempt a coup. Stanko Subotić, of course, also played a key role. Now, as the fight against crime in Serbia, on which certain people are targeted. Some are protected, and Stanko Subotic is the most prominent among the privileged," Seselj told Podgorica's Dan.
In recent years, Subotić again blamed the previous authorities for his persecution, especially that of Boris Tadić, and nowhere did he mention Vučić and Nikolić, who, as radicals, lynched him in the media far more fiercely than all other politicians.
Their interest in Canet disappeared precisely with the establishment of SNS, a party whose financing flows will become transparent perhaps only if they ever leave power. Only then will it become clear - whether Subotic is a real victim of political racketeers or just a cunning businessman who knows how to properly direct his money where it needs to go.
(Al Jazeera)
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