For more than two and a half decades, Duško Golubović, who was arrested this morning, was a secret service agent, and later an officer of the Police Directorate, and throughout his security career he was the closest associate of the accused operative and former assistant director of the Police Directorate, Zoran Lazović.
After being forced to leave the National Security Agency in 2015 during the service reform, initiated after numerous pressures from foreign partners, Golubović and Lazović arrived at the Police Directorate together in 2019 after four years of retirement.
The return of the two operatives occurred at a time when former police chief Veselin Veljović returned to the helm of public service, and then appointed Lazović as his assistant in the Organized Crime Sector, while Golubović was given the position of deputy head of the Department for Suppression of Serious Crimes.
Golubović was hired at the UP in 2019, but without public advertising, because the position he held at the then SBPOK was allegedly classified...
He retired in the summer of 2023, when he submitted a request to leave, after the Department formally ceased to exist in the UP organizational chart in April of that year by a decision of the then SBPOK coordinator and head of the Special Police Department, Predrag Šuković. Prior to that, Golubović was handed a deployment decision in the Asylum Seekers Department in Spuž.
The decision to close the Department followed the arrest of former Acting Assistant Director of the Police Administration Dejan Knežević, on suspicion of being a member of a criminal organization, which caused all Department officers to be temporarily unassigned or subject to numerous investigations and checks...
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Golubović's career at the top of the security sector was accompanied by numerous controversies and media allegations, and then a recent investigation by the NGO MANS into the enormous, million-dollar value and disproportion of his assets to the salary he received in the state sector for decades.
A months-long investigation into Duško Golubović's assets and income showed that his family spent over a million euros on the purchase of several properties and luxury vehicles over a period of ten years.
Golubović then claimed to MANS that he had acquired all his property legally and with the help of his family, and that he had never engaged in criminal activities.
Former Acting Director of the Police Administration Nikola Terzić said at the MANS anti-corruption conference in late 2023, among other things, that he did not feel comfortable when he "came into possession of information about colleagues who worked for criminal groups."
"Last night I received information that one of the former officers bought a vehicle for 300.000 euros, and until yesterday he was wearing a police badge. This is operational information," Terzić said at the time.
"Vijesti" announced a day later that UP operatives had received information that Duško Golubović had bought a "Lamborghini" worth at least 300 thousand euros, and that Terzić was actually referring to him.
In January of this year, the SDT opened a case regarding Golubović's property.
Scandals, bombings...
Duško Golubović, along with at least 70 operatives, left the ANB in April 2015, after legal changes, because reforms in that sector were a key NATO condition for Montenegro's admission to the alliance.
Before these reforms, the public was shaken by numerous scandals related to the political-security sector and the conflict between opposing factions.
Due to the delay in security sector reform in 2014, Montenegro's accession to NATO was postponed, after which the then US top official for European and Eurasian affairs, Hoyt Brian Yee, said that all intelligence services of NATO members and future members, including the Montenegrin ANB, "must be free from all vulnerabilities and external factors that would want to illegally pass on confidential allied information to third countries"...
Golubović's name was mentioned in the "Listing" affair - the investigation into that case began in December 2011, after the publication of telephone communications between Pljevlja resident Darko Šarić and then-Prime Minister Igor Lukšić and former Foreign Minister Milan Roćen. After that, a listing of communications between accused drug lord Naser Keljmendi and Golubović also appeared in the media.
The result of the investigation was that it was allegedly a matter of forgeries, but the public was never informed who launched the affair and for whose interests...
In November 2015, shortly after leaving the service, explosives were placed at the gate of Golubović's family home in Donja Gorica, previously in September at the "Grand" cafe, and in July at the "Machiato" cafe, which was owned for a time by Golubović's wife Danijela.
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These attacks in security circles were then interpreted as a warning to the team from "Grand" by the opposing "Mojkovčan", allegedly due to the announcement by the then Chief Special Prosecutor Milivoj Katnić, who was close to Lazović and Golubović, "that justice will knock on everyone's door".
Hearing in the investigation into the murder of the editor of Dan
Retired secret agent Duško Golubović was questioned last summer in the investigation into the murder of the editor of the newspaper "Dan" Duško Jovanović, and he gave the statement at the time in his capacity as a citizen.
Duško Jovanović was murdered on May 27, 2004, and so far only Damir Mandić has been held accountable for that crime, and even after almost 21 years, it has never been revealed who ordered it or who the direct killers were.
Former Prime Minister Dritan Abazović previously stated that "two names constantly surfaced in operational information related to the murder of Jovanović - Zoran Lazović and Duško Golubović."
"Everyone mentioned Lazović and a few other names in turn. My role was not to verify that information, but to pass it on to the authorities, which I did, demanding that finally, after two decades of silence and concealment, that crime be brought to light," he said. Abazović, without specifying the context in which those names appeared.
Last year, in the Higher State Prosecutor's Office in Podgorica, in numerous investigations and cases filed regarding this crime, which were handled by many prosecutors, Vesna Medenica, who was the Supreme State Prosecutor at the time of the murder, was also questioned.
Former UP director Veselin Veljović was also questioned as a witness.
Veljović announced several years ago that the murder of Jovanović had been solved operationally, meaning that the police knew who did it, but had no material evidence.
In mid-September 2019, Veljović stated that "the fatigue of the competent prosecutor on the night of the liquidation was the reason why the case of the murder of the owner of "Dan" was not fully resolved and that the case was irretrievably lost."
Bonus video:
