Milović: I have both Montenegrin and Bosnian customs under control

Police officers Ljubo Milović and Petar Lazović are deeply involved in the criminal activity of cigarette smuggling, according to the Europol report submitted to the Montenegrin Special State Prosecutor's Office on July 16, 2021, which Libertas had access to.

As reported by the site Libertas, Europol wrote in a report to the Montenegrin Special Prosecutor's Office that on February 2, 2021, SKY users Petar Lazović and Ljubo Milović created a chat group with the user Tot and that this chat group was "created exclusively for the criminal purposes of cigarette smuggling".

In the correspondence published by Libertas, it can be seen that Milović, Lazović and the user Tot talk about options for smuggling cigarettes. Milović asks Toto if he has a company that would order white goods or auto parts, because he has a driver and a transport company, and Montenegrin and Bosnian customs are under his control.

Milović says that they will complete the exit from the port, the border, and that Tot will complete the terminal, and that they have a thousand cartons available per week.

"Lazović and Milović are deeply involved in this criminal activity and there are hundreds of messages related to this criminal activity. This chat is just an example of their modus operandi. If Montenegro would be interested in undertaking an investigation in connection with cigarette smuggling, please send Europol a request for obtaining raw data," the Europol report says.

Libertas was unable to find out whether any of the Montenegrin competent authorities sent a request to obtain data that Europol did not process and whether they received it.

The former chief special prosecutor, Milivoje Katnić, after receiving a report from Europol on July 16, 2021, in which the European Law Enforcement Agency informed him that police officers Lazović and Milović were members of the organized criminal clan Kavač and that the investigation aimed at them should have been the number one priority of the Montenegrin police, on September 14, 2021, on behalf of the Special State Prosecutor's Office, he asked Europol to help him and send more data.

"According to the data collected so far, there is a reason to suspect that the police officers Petar Lazović and Ljubo Milović accepted membership in a criminal organization organized by Kašćelan Slobodan and whose members include Zvicer Radoje and other persons," reads the request letter sent by Katnić to Europol.

"The Special State Prosecutor's Office is conducting an investigation, in the case of business designation Ktr-S no. 242/21, due to the existence of grounds for suspicion that certain police officers in the previous period became members of the Kavač criminal organization, which operated on the territory of Montenegro and several other European countries and against whom the Special State Prosecutor's Office is investigating in several criminal cases due to the existence reasonable suspicion that they have committed the criminal acts of creating a criminal organization from Article 401a of the Criminal Code of Montenegro (CC of Montenegro), aggravated murder from Article 144 of the CC of Montenegro, murder from Article 143 of the CC of Montenegro and other criminal acts," the document reads.

Europol responded to Katnić's request, but special prosecutor Saša Čađenović, on January 20, 2022, made a decision that "there are no grounds for initiating criminal prosecution against any person for any criminal offense for which prosecution is undertaken ex officio".

After Libertas published only part of Europol's findings in May of this year, Katnić publicly asserted that "Petar Lazović was on an undercover mission and that he acted in accordance with the law and authority and that he informed his superiors about all actions in a timely manner."

He did not defend Milović, nor did he explain why he closed the investigation against him.

Katnić ended his career as a prosecutor in February of the same year.

After Libertas began to publish allegations from the Europol report on May 3, the newly elected chief special prosecutor, Vladimir Novović, opened a new case that resulted in the arrest of police officer Petar Lazović on July 18 and an arrest warrant for his colleague Ljub Milović, who is on the run. .

Libertas will not publish the codes under which the encrypted phones were registered in the application, but only the code names or names of the users so as not to harm the investigation.