Members of the Balkan drug cartel developed their own encrypted messaging application, which outwardly looked like "WhatsApp" (FakeWhatsApp), and provided their "soldiers" with phones with this application to secretly arrange cocaine smuggling and other illegal activities.
The foreign security services came to this knowledge during an operation carried out in October 2023, when part of a criminal group led by a Croatian drug lord was arrested. Nenad Petrak.
Five days ago, the German Federal Criminal Police (BKA), in cooperation with the Croatian authorities, carried out arrests throughout Germany and Croatia, as a continuation of that action.
The BKA announced that the investigations were initially based on the analysis of the suspect's communications through the Sky application.
"Analysis of mobile phones seized during operations in October 2023, it was suspected that the group had developed its own encrypted messaging application, which outwardly looked like 'WhatsApp' (FakeWhatsApp). Allegedly, the group distributed mobile phones to members and associates exclusively for the use of this service for covert communication about dealings with narcotics", said BKA officially.
It was pointed out that the analysis of those messages raised suspicions that the group continued to smuggle narcotics.
"Nine out of ten suspects, who were targeted by the action, were not identified during last year's operations. It is suspected that they participated in the smuggling of 133 kilograms of cocaine in four phases, which lasted for several days each during September and October 2023. The arrest of one of the group's courier drivers on October 30, 2023, when four kilograms of cocaine were seized, heightened suspicions that the group continued to trade narcotics shortly after the October 11, 2023 operation. With today's arrest of six people, 17 out of a total of 33 members of the group or their associates have been arrested so far as part of this investigation. "Seven more suspects are currently in prison in Croatia, Italy and Switzerland due to other investigations," the BKA said.
The interlocutor from the foreign security service explains that the action, part of which was carried out on October 15, began much earlier, and that it was directed against a cell of the Balkan Cartel, which organized the smuggling of almost a ton of cocaine in early 2020, which the Spanish police in September of that year seized in international waters near the Canary Islands.
"As part of the joint investigation by the Prosecutor's Office from Frankfurt am Main and BKA, arrests and searches were carried out last year in several German provinces, as well as in Croatia and Poland. At that time, the action was focused on members of a criminal organization involved in the smuggling of large quantities of drugs. Then more than 30 facilities were searched and eight suspects were arrested, some of whom had different nationalities, including Croatian, Serbian, Bulgarian, North Macedonian, Montenegrin, Russian, Austrian, Iraqi, German-Moroccan and German. That cell belongs to the Balkan Cartel, which includes various criminal groups from Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and which cooperate with criminal organizations in Europe and South America, especially with Colombian and Mexican cartels," said the same source. .
He explained that in the latest operation, carried out simultaneously in Croatia and Germany, in the area of Zagreb and Zaprešić, two Croatian and one Serbian citizen were arrested:
"Because of the suspicion that they belonged to an international drug group".
The BKA officially explains that on October 15, 21 facilities in the country and abroad were searched and six suspects were arrested.
"Three in Germany and three in Croatia".
Among those arrested in Croatia is a Serbian citizen, whose apartment was searched and five kilograms of cocaine was found.
On that day, German and Croatian police officers had 10 suspects on their arrest list, aged between 37 and 56, who have German, Romanian, Croatian, North Macedonian, Serbian and Ukrainian citizenship.
"During the search, at least 200.000 euros in cash, four safes, about six kilograms of cocaine, electronic data storage devices, various mobile phones and seven professional money-counting machines were seized... The group is suspected of having every year since 2020 took over several hundred kilograms of cocaine from Germany or the Benelux countries, and then distributed it in the Rhine-Main region, but also to the surrounding European countries. For this purpose, they used a network of courier drivers, who had accompanying vehicles, but also those with built-in bunkers... At least 19 vehicles, used by at least 13 couriers, were equipped with smuggling bunkers. The confiscated cocaine and money from the drug trade were kept in several apartments in the Frankfurt area," the BKA said.
"Montenegrins are difficult to negotiate"
Nenad Petrak was arrested in Turkey at the end of last year, and then extradited to the Croatian authorities.
Petrak and his clan closely cooperated with the Montenegrin Kavak clan.
According to the Croatian media, Petrak is in the Split prison in Bilice, and the indictment charges him, among other things, with buying large amounts of marijuana in Montenegro, issuing orders to four members of an organized criminal group to take the drug, store it and sell it to customers. .
"Montenegrins are difficult to negotiate, so we all have to stick to the plan," Petrak said to his interlocutor under the username ESJTJ5, whom investigators suspect is the accused Vlad Brkić from Zagreb.
USKOK states that the term "Montenegros" refers to members of the Kavac clan, whose leader is the fugitive Radoje Zvicer.
"The police and USKOK also reconstructed the conversations, and the investigators suspect that the 'guy from Split' is Brkić, and Žuti, on the other hand, the head of the Kavač clan, Radoje Zvicer, who has been unsuccessfully sought by Interpol for years," Croatian media say.
See more:
Download the app and follow the news
FOLLOW US ON
