Police Directorate Management: We encourage colleagues to remain resistant to corruption and persevere in the fight against crime

The management of the Police Directorate has encouraged and motivated police officers to selflessly contribute to the performance of police duties and tasks in order to confront modern security challenges.

The Police Directorate's statement says that the majority of its officers are honorable, honest and professional, and persistent and resistant "to all forms of corrupt activity and persevere in the fight against all forms of crime."

This institution made a statement after the arrest of three police officers - Dražen Vukadinović (41), Davor Lukačević (41) and Marko Đurišić (27).

Vukadinović and Lukačević are officers of the Special Police Unit, and Đurišić is an inspector of the Search Service of the Podgorica Police Department.

The three were arrested by officers of the Special Police Department, on the order and in coordination with the Special State Prosecutor's Office, along with four other individuals, due to reasonable suspicion that they committed the criminal offense of creating a criminal organization and the aggravated criminal offense of smuggling.

Among those arrested were Vesko Petranović, Dejan Jokić and Branko Čelić, while Ratomir Obrenić was released.

They are suspected of having continuously engaged in the illegal sale and distribution of tobacco products - cigarettes - from 2019 onwards.

"After months of investigative measures and actions, as presented in the criminal report of the Special Police Department, it emerges that the suspect VP created a criminal organization with the aim of carrying out criminal activities, whose members also included police officers. By carrying out these criminal activities, the suspects damaged the budget of Montenegro in the amount of over 7.000.000 euros," the police statement reads.

They add that the prosecution of this suspected criminal group "has dismantled one of the branches of the 'tobacco mafia' whose criminal activity has been present in Montenegro for decades."

"The Police Directorate strongly supports all organizational units, the Special Police Department and the Special State Prosecutor's Office and other legal control mechanisms and makes all capacities available in order to dismantle and neutralize the activities of criminal structures whose primary lucrative business (cigarette smuggling) developed and took place in the previous period, with the consequences of criminal activity reflected through infiltration among members of the Police Directorate. It is of fundamental importance and public interest to consistently investigate corruption in state bodies, primarily guided by the fact of the prosecution of a large number of police officers and managers in the security sector, and therefore guided by the principle of legality and professional non-selective action in the consistent application of the law," the police statement states, among other things.