A businessman Aleksandar Mijajlovic For years, he allegedly created a media network solely in order to deal with dissenters from the political and security leadership and the church, through loyal journalists and media platforms, but also to influence the political and security situation in the country.
The Special State Prosecutor's Office suspects that Mijajlović was directly assisted in this by the suspected high-ranking police and secret service officials. Drago Spicanovic, Milovan Pavićević i Vladan Lazović, as well as his cousin, the plaintiff Andrijana Nastić, giving him classified intelligence and data.
The organizer of the criminal group, as suspected by the SDT, received data obtained through secret surveillance measures, the content of numerous intercepted conversations, and allegedly had access to intelligence data and recordings from the National Security Agency (ANB) for years on a daily basis from the accused members.
SDT believes that from 2018 to 2024, Mijajlović directly created the editorial policy of numerous media outlets in the country: "Mportal", "Standard", "Pobjeda", "CDM", but also "Portal ETV", "Portal Analitika" and "Antena M", and he allegedly gave some of them instructions on how the texts should look and how long they should "stay on the front pages".
"Vijesti" has learned that the SDT suspects Mijajlović of directly forwarding to the media information he received from accused officials of the public and secret police and prosecutor Nastic, in order to shape public opinion, create a negative media image, and discredit politicians, church dignitaries and numerous individuals and dissenters, as well as to undermine the security system.
SDT's evidence indicates that on several occasions Mijajlović sent data, photographs, shared topics, as well as suggestions for interlocutors for articles, and ordered Milovan Pavićević, while he was the chief of police in Podgorica, when and how to send police statements.
Judging by the extensive evidence of the SDT, the businessman was able to obtain personal information about citizens from the protected police system in a very short time, but he also had direct insight into what was being discussed regarding the enthronement of the metropolitan. Joanikia in the parliamentary "dead room", and he also received direct information from the Police Directorate's collegium.
The SDT suspects that the defendant Drago Spičanović, at the time when he was the assistant director of the UP Veselin Veljović, provided the head of an organized crime group with data on the participants and precise number of people gathered at the processions, which the Serbian Orthodox Church organized at the end of 2019 and during 2020 due to the adoption of the Law on Freedom of Religion.
Mijajlović allegedly learned from him who was interrogated at the Special Prosecutor's Office while he was managing that institution. Milivoje Katnic, and Spičanović, according to the SDT's evidence, also informed him about the official actions of his colleagues in police cases. How "operative" Mijajlović's intelligence network was is best shown by the SDT's data that, at the businessman's behest, the defendant Spičanović ordered his colleagues to provide him with information and to monitor politicians and priests in the period before, but also after, the fall of the Democratic Party of Socialists in the August 2020 elections.
The investigating judge of the Higher Court in Podgorica ordered the detention of businessman Aleksandar Mijajlović and former head of the counterintelligence service Drago Spičanović last night. The accused police officers Milovan Pavićević and Vladan Lazović were ordered to house arrest, while Senior State Prosecutor Andrijana Nastic had her passport confiscated and is required to report to the police. The five were arrested on Friday.
POLITICIANS, ELECTIONS, SHRINE
That Mijajlović did not only have an influence on the media space in Montenegro is also shown by numerous messages and agreements he had with the first echelon of DPS politicians. As suspected by SDT, Mijajlović also agreed with a DPS MP in the summer of 2022 on colors during the development of the "Mportal" website, of which he is the informal owner, where he requested a precise designation of the DPS colors, so that the portal would have a uniform color scheme with the once ruling party.
On Mijajlović's orders, the MP, whose name is known to Vijesti, allegedly created a network of bots and pages on social networks, where in a short period of time that year on Twitter and Facebook they created, as they wrote in one of the messages, "a solid army..." Prosecutors state that they determined a precise method of propaganda - the first line started from the pages "Joksim" and "Radosav Vrbica", and then from these accounts, via media platforms and a network of bots, they created public opinion, with the aim of destroying the security system or discrediting politicians, clergy and other dissenters of Mijajlović and his crime team.
The businessman allegedly worked closely with numerous DPS politicians, with whom, according to the SDT, he counted votes and agreed on who was allowed to run in the 2020 parliamentary elections. The SDT states that he also had numerous correspondences with party officials and police officers, with whom he agreed on whom to send on work assignments outside their place of residence on August 30, 2020, in order to prevent them from voting, because they suspected that they were not in favor of their option.
According to SDT, he had a special focus on employees of the companies "Bemax", "Genex", but also companies affiliated with them, so Mijajlović and some politicians knew "in their heads" how everyone voted and whether anyone from their families was going to the marches...
In counting the votes, he allegedly had the wholehearted help of the accused police officers, who sent personal information from the police system about people Mijajlović was interested in, and he usually received the information in a very short period of time.
"Immediately", "I'll send it quickly", "Here, I'll do it now", "I'll check"..., according to the SDT's evidence, this is how police officers usually responded to Mijajlović, and then sent data about citizens after entering the police system through the codes of their colleagues from the Police Department.
During their work on this case, SDT and SPO officers found other material evidence that confirms these allegations and suspicions.
In addition to the parliamentary elections, the SDT suspects that Mijajlović did the same thing on the eve of the elections in Šavnik, Danilovgrad and Berane. Mijajlović and the then chief of police in Podgorica also had access to the voter lists of Danilovgrad residents so that the businessman could have a cross-section of who from that city worked in “his companies”. They “combed” the lists together with the then leaders of the DPS in Danilovgrad.
Out of loyalty, Mijajlović allegedly bought phones for some DPS officials, arranged for pre-election asphalting in some villages near Podgorica, and some mayors from that party used Mijajlović to smear political opponents.
NASTIĆ WAS SENDING DATA FROM SECRET SURVEILLANCE MEASURES
That Mijajlović's criminal organization also had influence in the judiciary is evident from the numerous messages he exchanged with the accused prosecutor Andrijana Nastić, who is his cousin.
At the end of 2021, while still at the Basic State Prosecutor's Office, Nastić informed Mijajlović about the situation within that institution, as well as how who voted during the internal election of the acting head of the Podgorica State Prosecutor's Office. Her task, according to the SDT, was to clarify and provide information on personnel decisions within the prosecutor's office, as well as information from the Podgorica State Prosecutor's Office collegium.
She allegedly informs him about numerous cases in the ODT Podgorica, and after her promotion, also about cases formed in the Higher State Prosecutor's Office in Podgorica. The SDT suspects that she was tasked with delivering information in Mijajlović's criminal organization, and it is believed that she also sent data obtained through secret surveillance measures during the investigation of the attempted murder when his son was wounded. Ranko Radulović.
She, as the SDT believes, revealed the secret information that Radulović was shot. Stefan Koprivica, son of a former police official Duška Koprivica.
Data from secret surveillance measures was also sent by the defendant Vladan Lazović, while he was assigned to the Special Police Department as a police officer.
Although he knew that revealing operational and intelligence information was harmful to the functioning of the security system, he allegedly repeatedly sent Mijajlović secret data about police actions and information about when the police would inspect cigarette warehouses in the Port of Bar.
He also shared secret information with him about people under secret surveillance.
Secret information about who is under police surveillance or under secret surveillance measures was allegedly sent by the defendant Drago Spičanovišć on several occasions.
Piperović: Operation Democrat
After the suspects were questioned before the investigating judge, Mijajlović's defense attorney, lawyer Zoran Piperović, told reporters that this was "an operation by the Democrats to exclude Mijajlović from social life."
"As for the incrimination, the organized criminal group consists of Aco Mijajlović, through the portals he has influence, exerting pressure on the competition, in order to change the will of the voters, to trivialize, to gossip about individuals or individual political organizations, to change the will of the voters, to fight against the competition, so I'm not caricaturing, that's what it says, and that the goal of the OKG is exactly that. So, here the state has put itself in the role of someone who should promote the values that the state thinks should exist, that there should be no political competition, that everyone thinks that there should be one religious community, that there should be no other," Piperović told reporters in front of the Higher Court in Podgorica.
"Out of the hundred messages he sent to Spičanović, in 95 messages he asked him to give him the registration number of a car that, while he was driving, passed him or crossed a solid line, or overtook a solid line, or with blinkers, which is not allowed for blinkers, because he said, I'm interested in whether any of the state officials were there. He was recording it and everything was recorded, it had already been published on the portal... What kind of secrets are these? He even explained in detail why he was asking for each individual registration," he added.
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