Who burned the traces to the murderer of Goran Žugić?

Murder Goran Žugić It was practically cleared up in the first days of the investigation, but allegedly some of the then security sector leaders completely obstructed the case, even destroying the diskettes with recordings of witness interrogations.

These are operational data from the security sector that Vijesti obtained.

The files of the former Public Security Service, compiled on several occasions in the weeks after the murder of the security guard, show what was done in the investigation of Žugić's assassination.

They cite statements from numerous people questioned in the investigation, some of whom spoke at length about their own involvement, as well as that of other underworld figures and public officials, in international cigarette smuggling, including operational information. In this context, they also mentioned the security advisor to the then president of the country. Milo Đukanović, shot dead on May 31, 2000.

Minister of Interior Affairs Danilo Šaranović He recently said that Žugić was killed because of this illegal business.

On July 28th, he said in parliament that he killed that security guard. Ivan Delic, by order Darko Beli Raspopović i Branislav Bran Mićunović.

At the end of last week, Šaranović testified at the Higher State Prosecutor's Office.

The files of the former Public Security Service, which have not been destroyed, show that Delić, Raspopović, Mićunović, as well as a dozen other names from the Yugoslav underground, were mentioned in the investigation.

Some of them were questioned, their alibis were checked, some gave statements multiple times... It was determined that on the night of the murder, two members of the Surčin clan were staying at the then-Hotel Crna Gora.

However, the police were unable to reach everyone - none of Micunovic's close underworld associates were available to the inspectors working on the case.

This is stated in the consolidated information on the official actions taken, which was then submitted to the then Assistant Minister of Internal Affairs. Vuk Bošković.

Serbian underground...

The files also state that the police officers did not benefit from their colleagues from the then State Security Service (SDB), but also that checks on telephone communications "were not fully implemented."

According to the same documents, several members of the Belgrade underworld were questioned in that investigation, and all of them were in Montenegro before or immediately after the crime.

The secret police, it is alleged, ignored the request of their colleagues to help them locate members of the Belgrade underground who, on September 10 of that year, the now deceased Branislav Mićunović "took over" in Vraćenovići and drove them to Nikšić.

"No one could determine where they were, or whether they remained in Montenegro," it is written in the files of the inspectors at the time, who survived.

That Belgrader and the team that entered the country with him were not the only tough guys from Serbia who, according to the files, were of interest to the investigation.

In the first hours, two important players in the Serbian underworld were questioned by the police, who denied any guilt. They claimed that they had come to the Montenegrin capital to buy an armored car.

After being held for a whole day, they were released from the police premises and left Montenegro.

In the following days, however, the inspectors announced a search for one of them - he contacted them a day later, explaining that he had left Belgrade for Zagreb, where he was told that the Montenegrin police were looking for him.

Although he was told after an additional statement that he was not leaving Montenegro, he did so a day later, after a meeting with two secret agents at the time.

One of them, whose identity is known to "Vijesti", told the police that the then Minister of Internal Affairs, now deceased, was aware of the border crossing. Vukašin Maraš.

The same person saw this Belgrade criminal the day before Žugić's murder, the files show...

Murder of an advisor

Žugić was the security advisor to the then president of the country, Milo Đukanović, and was assassinated by gunfire on May 31, 2000.

According to official police data, Žugić was killed around 23 p.m. on Sava Kovačevića Boulevard in Podgorica.

According to this version, he drove his Audi A6 to the building where he lived, parked the car and headed for the entrance. An executioner, about 1,75 meters tall, ran up behind him and fired a dozen shots at him from an automatic pistol - three of which hit him in the head.

It was said in police circles that the murder of Đukanović's advisor was connected to the tobacco mafia.

Two years after the murder of Đukanović's advisor, Goran Stanjević, the then representative of the Government Agency for Foreign Investments, said that Žugić was killed just a few months after he delivered documentation from Switzerland related to the Bari prosecutor's investigation into cigarette smuggling between Montenegro and Italy.

He told Italian investigators that year that the smuggling documentation related to Đukanović's role in the business and that he brought the papers to Montenegro after the wife of the "smuggling king" contacted him. Cira Macarele.

In the documents of the Italian prosecution, it is written that Stanjević was a representative of the Government Agency for Foreign Investments in Switzerland from 1995 to 1998.

He told the prosecutor that two or three years before the 2002 hearing, the wife of Ćiro Macarela, who lives in Lugano, contacted him and provided him with documentation related to the investigation by the Bari prosecutor's office. He says they asked him to take the documentation to Montenegro in person, which he claims he did - the next day he took about twenty A4 books to Podgorica. He did not answer precisely the questions they asked for confirmation that Macarela had obtained the documentation through his channels, which was not yet publicly available at the time. He told them that Žugić was killed a few months after he had provided him with the documents.

"Through international legal assistance, several states were requested to collect information and certain data about the criminal offense in question, which... did not yield results in identifying the perpetrator of this criminal offense," the Prosecutor's Office wrote in its previous responses.