The case of Svetozar Marović represents a defeat for the rule of law in Montenegro, Dejan Milovac from the Network for the Affirmation of the Non-Governmental Sector (MANS) told Radio Free Europe (RFE).
For nine years, Montenegro has been waiting for Belgrade to extradite Marović, due to him serving a prison sentence for organized crime and the multi-million-dollar damage he caused to Budva.
The Ministry of Justice announced that it will send a seventh extradition request to Serbia.
The absolute statute of limitations on the sentence to which Marović was sentenced, of three and a half years in prison, begins in October 2026.
Marović was the head of the Montenegrin parliament, a long-time close party associate of Milo Đukanović, and the chief ideologue of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), which ruled Montenegro for three decades, until the elections in August 2020.
After admitting to being the leader of a criminal group, Marović, upon his release from six months of detention in May 2016, went to Belgrade to receive treatment for depression instead of serving his sentence. This has been stated by his lawyers on several occasions.
He never returned to Montenegro, which issued an Interpol arrest warrant for him in May 2017.
Since then, Montenegro has officially sent six requests and requests for his extradition to the Serbian Ministry of Justice, which the Belgrade authorities ignored.
Current Justice Minister Bojan Božović announced on April 28 that he would send a new letter of request for Marović's extradition.
Whether he has sent it in the meantime is a question to which RFE/RL has not received a response from Božović's office since May 8. There has also been no response from the Serbian Ministry of Justice, which confirmed receipt of RFE/RL's inquiry on May 8.
Milovac is convinced that Marović's prison sentence will expire
Dejan Milovac, director of the MANS Research Center, says that the Marović case shows that even after the removal of the DPS government, the state is not capable of providing justice to its citizens.
"Although this case was publicly presented as one of the successes in the fight against so-called high-level corruption, few can say that justice was served in the case of Marović and his family," he told RFE/RL.
He suspects that this outcome was planned from the beginning of the case.
"It is difficult to suspect anything other than that this outcome was planned from the very beginning, that Marović would not serve a single day of his prison sentence in Montenegro."
This issue remains one of the open ones between Serbia and Montenegro.
"So far, we have seen minimal effort, if any, from all three governments that came after DPS to focus on this issue and bring justice to the citizens of Montenegro on this symbolic example."
Milovac is convinced that the prison sentence will expire in the case of Svetozar Marović.
"I do not see any progress in sending letters of request, nor is this issue a priority in communication between the ministries of justice of the two countries."
Vain urgencies, Marović at large
Montenegro has sent six letters of request to Serbia in nine years.
RFE/RL received this data in February 2025 from the Ministry of Justice, through the non-governmental organization MANS.
Extradition and urgency requests have been sent to Serbia by four ministers in previous years. The first was sent during the DPS government, in which Marović was a high-ranking official.
Minister Zoran Pažin April 2, 2019
Request for response from Belgrade dated June 20, 2020.
Minister Vladimir Leposavić second request - December 28, 2020.
Minister Andrej Milović on January 28, 2022.
Minister Andrej Milović's extradition request on April 12, 2022.
Minister Marko Kovač's request, or rather the urgency, on August 5, 2022.
In his latest plea, Kovač states that there is a risk that the sentence will run out of statute of limitations.
"Given that this is a person who was finally convicted in mid-2016, there is a risk that the absolute statute of limitations for the execution of the criminal sanction will apply in 2026," the petition states.
Vučić: You wouldn't believe how complicated it is
The Serbian Ministry of Justice responded to the first request in April 2019 by confirming that it had received Montenegro's extradition request. "The Serbian Ministry of Justice will forward the received requests with accompanying documentation to the competent court for processing," the Ministry stated at the time.
The extradition requests have been sporadically commented on by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and the country's long-time former prime minister, Ana Brnabić.
Vučić said in March 2021 that Marović's extradition was a matter for the Serbian judicial authorities.
"You wouldn't believe how complicated it is," Vučić said in March 2021.
Former Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabić also said in November of that year that this was a matter for the judiciary.
"I have to check with our judicial authorities what this is about. That is up to the competent institutions, not me as Prime Minister," said Brnabić.
In 2011, the two countries signed a Treaty on the Mutual Extradition of Their Nationals, which provides for the extradition of persons charged with serious crimes, organized crime, corruption, and crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The European Convention on Extradition also obliges Serbia to extradite. In the case of Marović, this agreement was not applied.
Since April 2022, Svetozar Marović has been on the blacklist of the United States of America.
What was Marović convicted of?
Marović was arrested in December 2015 and five months later, on May 17, 2016, he was released from custody in Spuž after admitting that he was the head of an organized crime group that caused damage to Budva worth tens of millions of euros.
He was sentenced to three years and nine months in prison and ordered to pay 1,1 million euros in damages to the state and 100 thousand euros for humanitarian purposes.
Marović did not pay that money into the budget, so the Higher Court in Podgorica replaced his sentence with a one-year prison sentence.
In the meantime, that sentence has become statute-barred. The Basic Court in Kotor confirmed this to RFE/RL on June 28, 2021.
Marović, who had been unavailable to the media until then, spoke publicly for the first time in August 2020, where he said, among other things, that by signing the plea agreement, he was saving his family.
Statute of limitations also applies in the case of Marović's son Miloš
The statute of limitations expired in the case of his son Miloš Marović, who was sentenced to a year in prison for fraud in the sale of state land in Budva.
He applied for and received citizenship from Serbia. He then requested to serve his prison sentence in that country.
However, in the meantime, in September 2020, his sentence became statute-barred.
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