Former secret agent Dusko Golubovic told investigators that, at the request of Đorđija Đok Pavićević, from the then director of the Customs Administration Vladan Joković requested that a man close to Baranin remain at the head of the Bar Customs House, because, as he stated, he was essential to his cigarette smuggling business.
During the hearing at the Special State Prosecutor's Office (SDT), Golubović explained that he contacted Joković using previous collegial connections from the National Security Agency (ANB), where they both worked for years, and that he believed that his request had been respected.
"Đoko Pavićević asked him if he could influence the distribution of customs officers, or whether he could arrange for the then Customs Director Vlado Joković to leave a certain K. as the head of the Bar Customs House because he needed him, and since he had known Vlado Joković for a long time, given that they were colleagues in the ANB, he called him and asked him to leave K. as the head of the Bar Customs House and thought that K. should stay in that position," prosecutors paraphrase his statement in the indictment.
According to the statement in that document, Golubović said that he had informally spoken with Pavićević about the method of removing cigarettes from the Port of Bar, stating that the latter told him on that occasion that he had "several of his own customs officers", whom he had appointed.
After that, he said that he called Joković and conveyed this request to him, stating that he thought that person had remained in that position.
"He knows that K. was very important to Đoko Pavićević, because, at his request, he appointed customs officers to the Free Zone, but he does not know why he was so important to him, except that he repeatedly mentioned that he did him favors," the prosecution documents state.
Golubović added that he did not remember exactly when Baranin asked him for that favor: "Possibly after he put Sander Stanaj in touch with him," the document adds. Stanaj is the second defendant in the trial.
He also spoke to investigators about the financial aspects of the business, stating that Pavićević told him that cigarettes were purchased in Luka or imported from abroad, that ownership was transferred in Luka, and that around 70 thousand euros were paid for the purchase of a container of cigarettes in Luka...
"Đoko also told him that exporting cigarettes across the customs line costs a lot, because he has to pay customs officers, a port worker, a worker who does the reloading, a worker at the gate, and his own workers who later transfer the goods from the trucks to the warehouses and from the warehouses to the trucks," the document adds.
In his statement, he also described the logistics of transport in detail - that after loading, seals were placed on the trucks, which, as he stated, were provided by customs officers close to Pavićević.
According to him, the trucks were left on the boulevard near the Bar Cathedral, where Pavićević's drivers would pick them up, take them to be loaded, and return them to the same place.
Speaking about the customs officers who, according to the indictment, worked for Pavićević, Golubović named Ivana Kovačević and the couple B., emphasizing that B.'s wife opposed the illegal work, but that her husband, despite this, agreed to participate in smuggling.
He also claimed that he never received money from Sander Stanaj for cigarette delivery jobs, but that their contacts were limited to frequent meetings within the Rokšped company, due to their shared interest in vehicles.
Following Golubović's arrest, the Special State Prosecutor's Office and the Special Police Department announced that they suspect that the former ANB operative was one of the organizers of a criminal organization that, according to prosecutorial files, has been illegally placing tobacco products on the market since 2020 by smuggling cigarettes from the Port of Bar and through a network of logistics and couriers. Sander Stanaj from Tuzi, associated with "Rokšped", was identified as the second organizer, who was not available to law enforcement at the time of the operation because he was outside Montenegro.
Meanwhile, the SDT has filed an indictment against Golubović and 14 other people.
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The Pope, the Cardinal and the Soccer Ball
Golubović, the indictment states, stated that he had a crypt, or rather a phone with the Sky application...
“... If he had used the crypt briefly, Sander Stanaj had brought it to him, and three codes had already been typed on it: one 'soccer ball', one 'Cardinal' and one 'Pope'”...
He said that Sander told him that the Cardinal was in that communication...
"He does not know who determined the code names, i.e. whether he determined his name or Sander did it for him, and mainly Sander brought him formed phones, two of them: he told him that one was for him and that he should give the other to Đoko and that is what he said, he quotes: 'Give one to Đoko', and the third phone probably stayed with Sander because on the two he gave him - one for him, the other for Đoko - he typed this 'soccer ball' and that was his code name, he assumes," the document states.
He added that he had not used Sky for long, only three to four months, that he was not skilled in technology, and that he had transmitted most of the information to Pavićević through ordinary telephone conversations.
Bonus video:
