The French Le Monde published a text by Remi Urdan within the series "Geopolitics of the Mafia", entitled "In the Balkans, criminal gangs in the heart of the state system".
"The reasons for the explosion of violence in recent years between bandits from Serbia and Montenegro sometimes remain mysterious. "Shootings in cafes, car explosions, corpses found on the streets of Belgrade, Kotor or Podgorica, not to mention the unknown number of missing persons - seven years of gang war, assassinations and revenge, left a balance of at least fifty dead," writes the paper, as quoted by Nova.
It added that the main triggers are known and both happened in 2014.
"On the one hand, the disappearance of at least 200 kilograms of cocaine in the Spanish port of Valencia apparently caused divisions in the cartel headed by Darko Sarić and marked the outbreak of the 'Kotor War' between two rival gangs, the Skaljarac clan and the Kavchan clan. On the other hand, the arrest of Sarić himself opened a war of succession between his most loyal associates, who run his empire while he is in prison, and ambitious individuals, who dream of greater independence and the profits that accompany it," the text states.
The gang war gained new momentum two years later, in 2016, after the murder of Aleksandar Stanković, better known as "Sale Mutavi", the leader of the Janjičari gang, made up of the most extreme fans of the Belgrade football club Partizan. Traditionally, in Serbia, groups of hooligans are a fertile reservoir for the underground, as they were for paramilitary militias during the wars of the XNUMXs, writes Le Monde.
"The icon of this parallel world was, during the reign of president and wartime commander Slobodan Milošević (1989-2000), Željko Ražnatović, better known as Arkan, the leader of the fans of Red Star, another football club in Belgrade, and then the leader of Arkan's Tigers, a paramilitary group which worked under the orders of the Serbian secret police. Arkan, who was accused by an international court like Milosevic of crimes against humanity, was killed in the Intercontinental Hotel in Belgrade, just before the fall of the President of Serbia, by an assassin who, like him, had a mafia gun in one hand and a police badge in the other. ", writes Le Monde.
The main centers for money laundering from human trafficking are construction, catering, tourist infrastructure, etc., writes the French newspaper.
"Since the fall of communism and the wars in the former Yugoslavia, the Balkan mafias have developed so much that today they are considered the main actors of international organized crime. Serbian, Montenegrin and Albanian gangs, which began to flourish three decades ago, from the smuggling of weapons and cigarettes, are now the main factor in the arrival of South American cocaine in Europe. They also trade heroin and produce marijuana and synthetic drugs. Their profits are such that they have invested a large part of their income in legal economic flows," the text states.
"The Legacy of the Yugoslav Secret Police"
While Albanian criminals initially arose from connections with Italian mafias, those in Serbia and Montenegro at the start had a rather original trump card, which, at that level, can only be found in Russia - their close connection with the state, the paper states.
Created during the communist era of the Yugoslav secret police, strengthened during the wars of Milošević's special services, this connection is still extremely strong, notes Le Monde.
Experts even ask whether Serbia and Montenegro can be described as "mafia states" and, given the financial power that the world of organized crime has acquired, whether they are still bandits in the service of the state or are now the two states and those who are in the service of bandits.
In Serbia, we distinguish three different periods.
"Milošević was the godfather of criminals and paramilitary formations. Then in 2000, Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić tried to solve the problem, so they killed him in 2003", says Vuk Cvijić, journalist of the weekly NIN.
During the rule of the Democratic Party, between 2000 and 2012, "although there was still corruption, there was no longer a direct connection between the Serbian authorities and organized crime," Cvijić believes.
At that time, two large police operations were carried out in cooperation with Interpol and foreign police services - Operation Saber, against the Zemun clan and Đinđić's killers (2003) and Operation Balkan Warrior, against the Darko Šarić cartel (2009).
"Today, under Vučić, the state and the mafia cooperate again to the extent that there is no longer a clear difference between them," says Vuk Cvijić.
One might even wonder if the mafia has become stronger than the state.
In Montenegro, the story is different, because the same man Milo Đukanović has been in power since the fall of communism in 1991.
"Djukanovic is the boss. All Montenegrin clans have the same employer - the president of the state," accuses Jovo Martinović, a well-known journalist who has been investigating organized crime for twenty years.
The difference with Latin America is that Pablo Escobar was a bandit who acted against the state. In Montenegro, Pablo is the president, adds Martinović.
The close relationship between political authorities and organized crime is apparently difficult to prove, given that, even if some investigations sometimes point to a politician or businessman, "the organic connection historically goes through the secret services", notes a European diplomat who has long known all the intricacies of the Serbian and Montenegrin authorities.
"Trade is organized by the authorities of Serbia and Montenegro. Many criminals have secret service or police badges. The two presidents work together and have common interests," says Jovo Martinović.
Experts also point to the role, in addition to each president, of his own brother who manages family affairs. Andrej Vučić in Belgrade and Aco Đukanović in Podgorica thus play a key role on the edge of politics, business and dirty money, writes Le Monde.
"Drugs are one thing," says the diplomat.
However, Đukanović undoubtedly built his fortune even more on privatization than on illegal trade. His brother Aco is a billionaire, says Le Monde journalist Remi Urdan.
"No one on the international stage knows how to tackle the issue of organized crime in Serbia and Montenegro," says Stevan Dojčinović, an investigator at the Serbian research site Krik, "because no one understands the core of the problem - it is not a problem of individual corruption, it is a state system".
This was already the case during Milošević's time, and it continues with Vučić and Đukanović. It is a state operation that is difficult to prove, he adds.
The Italian judiciary, which tried on several occasions to investigate the relationship between politicians and criminals in the Balkans, especially with Milo Đukanović in cases related to the Italian mafia, broke its teeth in that effort. Even the judiciary in other European countries has not succeeded in bringing to justice the leaders of notorious drug traffickers. Those who have been investigating organized crime in the former Yugoslavia for a long time also believe that this crime, related to the state secret services, is protected by other intelligence services, American and European, in exchange for information, or even through political deals, writes Le Monde.
A chaotic galaxy
"The West is trying to bring Serbia to Europe, while Aleksandar Vučić has close relations with Moscow and cordial relations with Beijing. And Milo Đukanović is, from a historical point of view, the most sincere pro-Western, pro-NATO, pro-European leader in the region," analyzes one European diplomat.
In the name of geopolitics, it turns a blind eye to the illegal activities of these otherwise fragile states, Le Monde added.
In addition to the highly opaque issue of the involvement of secret services in criminal activities, understanding the intricacies of gangs is not an easy task for investigators.
"Balkan organized crime has never had a boss of all bosses like the Italian mafia. These are independent cells, which develop rapidly, within groups that divide and recombine by themselves. There are about 300 criminal groups in the Balkans," says Dojčinović.
"There is no Balkan cartel, it is a cooperation between gangs, whose main task is to transport cocaine from Latin America to Europe", confirms Saša Đorđević from the Belgrade office of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, an independent organization based in Geneva.
In Serbia, after the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić and Operation Saber, the Serbian smuggler of Montenegrin origin, Darko Šarić, established himself as the only one who to some extent managed to unite this chaotic galaxy. Šarić was considered the most powerful drug lord that these countries have had in the last thirty years. He has been in prison since 2014 and was sentenced to fifteen years for drug trafficking, then to nine years for money laundering in 2020. Appeal proceedings are still ongoing.
"Meanwhile, on the Adriatic coast, the doyen of Montenegrin smugglers, Branislav Mićunović, has established himself as a powerful coordinator between the clans watching for the arrival of cocaine. "Mićunović leads a peaceful old age in Budva, living on the top floor of his hotel-casino, Splendid," the text emphasizes.
It is said that the business of criminals flourished during the reign of Darko Šarić, despite the enmity with the then authorities in Belgrade.
"Some Balkan groups have risen in the hierarchy over the past two decades, from petty thugs and messengers to major drug dealers," the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime points out in its 2020 "Transnational Tentacles" report.
Balkan groups have become key players in organized crime in Europe, Turkey, Latin America, as well as in South Africa and Australia. For South American cocaine, they operate mainly from Colombia and Ecuador, as well as Uruguay, Peru and Brazil. For the arrival of drugs, they are present on the Spanish, Italian, Greek, Albanian and Montenegrin coasts.
One video illustrates this relatively peaceful time, before the war of gangs shook the fragile balance between criminal organizations, writes the French newspaper.
In the video from the wedding of Safet Kalić, the leader of the Montenegrin gang from Rožaj, all the Balkan criminal leaders, including Darko Šarić, can be seen kissing and celebrating. The video, published on the Internet in 2010, caused a scandal because it also shows the presence at the party of Zoran Lazović, whom then President Đukanović was tasked with fighting crime within the secret services, as well as Ljubiša Mijatović, who will become his head of security.
The president defended himself by claiming that the men mentioned were on a mission to spy on criminals, but he convinced few people with that, according to journalist Urdan.
"Politics, football and the underworld"
After the affair in Valencia and the arrest, under American pressure, of Darko Šarić, who had become too powerful, the balance was disturbed and the "Kotor War" broke out. That war is fought between the Skaljarski and Kavački clans, named after two villages in the vicinity of the Montenegrin seaside resort. Kotor has carved out a special place for itself in the world of drug trafficking, relying on its maritime culture. A young sailor from the area has little choice but to become a drug smuggler.
In addition to the conflict between bandits for drug money, the experts' hypothesis is that the Skaljar clan rose too quickly after the arrest of Darko Šarić and began to fantasize about a certain independence in relation to the Serbian and Montenegrin secret services.
Le Monde writes that Belgrade and Podgorica in that war were in favor of the Kavak clan, which was created by a split within the Skaljar clan. Kavčani are said to be notoriously close to hooligans connected to Vučić's networks in Serbia and to Đukanović's secret police in Montenegro.
From the Belgrade side, it is clear that the police mainly targeted the Skaljars, the text emphasizes and adds that their then leader Jovan Vukotić was arrested in Turkey in 2018 at the request of Serbia, extradited to Belgrade and tried for an extremely trivial reason (using a false passport), as well as that the members of the Skaljar clan, who were persecuted in Serbia, took refuge all over Europe, and some were persecuted and killed in Spain, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Greece.
Although it is not known who killed Aleksandar Stanković, the leader of Janjičar, allegedly close to the Kavačac clan, the disappearance of Salet mutav also led to changes within the criminal underworld of Belgrade. The eyes were fixed on the powerful Luka Bojović, at the time when he was the head of the Zemun clan and close to the Škaljarci. Since then, Stanković was replaced by Veljko Belivuk, better known as "Velja Nevolja", and Bojović, from prison in Spain, entrusted the leadership of the gang to Filip Korac, a man who has been rising through the ranks of the Serbian underground in recent years.
"Although the involvement of the Serbian authorities in this war of gangs is difficult to prove in court, the Janjičari, which Belivuk renamed the Principi (named after Gavril Princip, the Serbian assassin of the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914) have grown significantly stronger since Aleksandar Vučić came to power in 2012 year", the text states.
Le Monde points out that the Janjičari guarded Vučić's ceremonial inauguration, and his son Danilo regularly appeared in public with members of the gang.
The connection between the state and Princip was established, according to journalistic investigations, by Dijana Hrkalović, a former member of the secret police service whom Aleksandar Vučić promoted to state secretary in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, until her resignation in 2019.
The French newspaper writes that Hrkalović was a close friend of the leader of Janjičar and high-ranking officer of the gendarmerie Nenad Vučković, known as "Vučko", a member of the Partizan fan club and a close friend of Velja Nebula and Salet Mutavoj. Hrkalović, who described President Vučić as "a man who surpasses all of us with his genius", submitted her resignation and has been silent since the inconvenient stories were disclosed to the public.
"One of those cases is the discovery, on a farm in Jovanjica in Vojvodina, of a twelve-hectare field, where 65.000 marijuana plants were hidden behind crops of tomatoes, cucumbers and onions, a laboratory and 600 kilograms of drugs, as well as weapons and the most modern equipment for surveillance and monitoring. The owner of the farm, which was regularly visited by government officials, had a fake badge and police license plates that were provided to him by police officers who worked for Dijana Hrkalović," writes Le Monde.
They add that the second case is the discovery that "Vučko" discreetly used the police shooting club to train with the leaders of Janjičar, Stanković and Belivuk, as well as Novak Nedić, the general secretary of Vučić's government.
"Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić knows well this world that functions between politics, football and the underworld. As a young man, he was a Red Star fan during Arkan's time. Active in politics together with Vojislav Seselj, the leader of the Serbian extreme right and with a paramilitary militia similar to Arkan's, he was a minister under Milošević. Today, it seems, he uses the hooligans of Partizan, a club that is traditionally close to the secret police because it belongs to the state," the text reads.
However, they add, this year two events took place in the Serbian-Montenegrin criminal world. The police in Belgrade arrested Veljko Belivuk and about twenty Janjicars in February, to everyone's surprise. The judiciary charges Belivuk with murder, kidnapping, extortion and drug smuggling. Since his arrest, the media close to the authorities have been reporting the testimonies of the families of the gang's missing victims.
"It is still not known why the state decided to put an end to this criminal group after many years of protection," comments Dojčinović.
In addition to the discovery of the place where the executions were carried out in a house in Ritopek, on the outskirts of Belgrade, one hypothesis is, according to one expert, that "Belivuk's group, which was in the service of the state, went too far in racketeering businessmen close to the authorities".
"Doctor Death"
In April, Slobodan Kašćelan, head of the Kavac clan, was arrested in Montenegro. Here the turn of the situation has a rational explanation, according to Le Monde, because the party of President Đukanović lost in the parliamentary elections in 2020 and the dinosaur of Montenegrin politics found himself, although he retained influence over the secret services and the judiciary, in a situation of cohabitation with a government that is hostile to to him.
"The state no longer controls organized crime. Đukanović no longer has undisputed power," says Vanja Ćalović Marković, director of the National Council for the Fight against Corruption.
Kašćelan was arrested on the order of Dritan Abazović, the Deputy Prime Minister who coordinates the security services. That young and brave Abazović revealed that, in the wake of the change of government, the Kavački clan offered him, through people close to the "godfather" Branislav Mićunović, to meet him. After his refusal, he received a message: "We will see each other, one way or another...".
Shortly after that, they say, an assassination attempt was thwarted thanks to wiretapping, which revealed a sniper assassination plan, as in the case of Zoran Đinđić in Belgrade almost two decades ago. Dritan Abazović said that he is "ready to pay any price in order to defeat organized crime". Abazović dismissed Zoran Lazović, the director of the police service for combating organized crime, the man who appeared in the tape of Kalić's wedding, and who, according to one source close to the government, was long considered to be "the link between the state and organized crime" in Montenegro.
The relationship between people in power and the underworld sometimes takes a very strange turn. The old story still makes Belgrade howl with laughter or cry with rage, depending on the interlocutor. Twenty years ago, petty criminal Veselin Božović found himself targeted by an attacker with a Kalashnikov in a street in Belgrade. He was still alive when he arrived at the hospital, as the killer's bullets had not hit his vital organs. His wife, son and two bystanders, although also wounded, also survived. It was a kind of miracle.
"But then doctor Zlatibor Lončar entered the scene, who was not on duty that day but suddenly arrived at the emergency center of the hospital. An hour later, Bozovic was dead. "The police investigation proved that Dr. Lončar injected him with a lethal substance," writes Le Monde.
"He told us - I will finish him off...", one repentant criminal testified, according to the text.
A newspaper from France writes that ten days later the doctor received an apartment as compensation for his services. They point out that he denied the charges and was never prosecuted due to what police said was a lack of evidence.
"Doctor Lončar actually worked for the Zemun clan, at that time the most powerful in Serbia. Then the man, nicknamed 'Doctor Death' by the Serbian tabloids, became a loyal follower of President Aleksandar Vučić. Today, he is the Minister of Health", concludes the text of Le Monde journalist Remi Urdan.
Bonus video:
