Three men were arrested in the United States on Monday on suspicion of trying to bribe a juror with $100 in cash to free former heavyweight boxer Goran Gogic, a Montenegrin citizen who was accused of smuggling 20 tons of cocaine, the Associated Press (AP) reports.
Because of this incident, a federal judge suddenly dismissed the jury just as opening statements were about to begin in the trial taking place in Brooklyn, New York.
A new, anonymous jury will be selected after a 30-day recess, said John Marzulli, a spokesman for federal prosecutors in Brooklyn. Judge Joan Azrak has scheduled a hearing for December 17.
Gogić is accused of participating in a conspiracy to smuggle 20 tons of cocaine from Colombia to Europe through US ports, using commercial cargo ships. The Montenegrin citizen has pleaded not guilty.
Assistant US Attorney Francisco Navro told the judge that the three men were arrested after they approached a juror and offered him $100 for an acquittal.
The prosecutor added that the defendants may have come into possession of the juror list or jury information from "individuals associated with this trial."
Gogić's lawyer, Joseph Corozo, told the judge that he had informed the former boxer that Monday's trial would not take place.
One of the defendants, Mustafa Fteja, was released on $150 bail after a hearing on Tuesday. The other two defendants, Valmir Krasniqi and Afrim Kupa, remained in custody. Fteja, Krasniqi and Kupa were not required to enter a plea during their initial court appearance.
Police officials described Gogić as a "major drug trafficker" who operated on a "huge scale".
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According to data from the boxing website Sport & Note, Gogić boxed professionally in Germany from 2001 to 2012, achieving a record of 21 wins, 4 losses, and 2 draws.
In a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Brooklyn, an FBI agent wrote that the bribery scheme took place between Thursday and Sunday.
According to court documents, Fteja already knew the juror, identified as "John Doe #1," and called him on his cell phone several times on Thursday, after which the juror agreed to meet in Staten Island.
During a meeting Thursday, Fteja told a juror that the people of the Bronx were willing to pay him for an acquittal, the complaint states.
Two days later, during a second meeting, Fteja told the juror that they were willing to pay him between $50 and $100 to influence the course of the trial.
According to the complaint, investigators obtained several recorded conversations between the defendants about planning to bribe jurors, which were conducted in Albanian and English. Court documents also contain some quotes from those conversations.
Gogić faces a sentence of ten years to life in prison. According to prosecutors, Gogić and his accomplices collaborated with ship crew members to smuggle cocaine in containers, lifting the drug load from speedboats that would approach cargo ships along their route, including ports in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.
US law enforcement officials intercepted three shipments, prosecutors said, including 1.437 kilograms of cocaine on the MSC Carlotta in the Port of New York–New Jersey in February 2019 and 17.956 kilograms of cocaine — worth more than $1 billion — on the MSC Gayane in the Port of Philadelphia in June 2019.
The Philadelphia seizure marked one of the largest cocaine seizures in U.S. history, prosecutors said.
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