The associate of the Serbian criminal for the Government of Montenegro is an expert

The Government of Montenegro previously hired Mirjana Aćimović, an associate of the convicted criminal Andrija Drašković, as an external expert for changing the Law on Games of Chance.

This can be seen in Aćimović's biography on the website of the Serbian Association of Organizers of Games of Chance "Jakta", where she is the president.

According to her statement, Drašković's colleague was invited to Montenegro by the Government in 2011. At the beginning of October of that year, Aćimović was at a public hearing regarding amendments to the Law on Games of Chance of Montenegro.

In February 2014, the Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia (CINS) and the journalist network Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) published research on the connection between casinos, criminal groups, ministries and the police in Serbia.

CINS and OCCRP researchers discovered, among other things, that Aćimović was employed as a director in Drašković's company for 17 years.

At the same time, her association actively worked and is working with government officials to amend the Gambling Act, trains police officers and financial inspectors, and lobbies domestic, regional and European authorities.

Aćimović worked for Drašković since 1997, when she was appointed director of his company "Fun" (the company later changed its name to "DLM AT Holding Group"), which owned, among other things, two casinos and a popular night club. Havana" in the center of Belgrade.

Drašković is also the owner of the company "Maestral Nautika", an active company in Croatia, where Aćimović was registered as a director according to the research report at the time, although the company had not submitted financial reports since 2008.

In a conversation with CINS and OCCRP journalists, Aćimović claimed that she no longer works with Drašković and that she does not see why their relationship is a problem. She says she has coffee with him once every 15 months.

"The relationship was (then) business... The man was in prison until some time ago and we saw each other once after that. And that on some private basis, it's irrelevant," Aćimović said.

Drašković was arrested a few days ago at the airport in Split. He was detained on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by the Belgian authorities.

The Belgians are looking for him for the murder of the Albanian emigrant Enver Hadri, the president of the Movement for Human Rights, who was liquidated at the end of February 1990 in the center of Brussels.

At the end of 2013, Drašković was released from prison in Sremska Mitrovica, where he served his sentence for the murder of Zvonko Plečić in the Belgrade restaurant "Knez 2000".

He was sentenced to nine years in prison, but his sentence was reduced by two years and three months.

In 2007, Drašković was arrested in Frankfurt and transferred to Italy due to an investigation into cigarette and drug smuggling. He was soon released due to lack of evidence.

Along with Branislav Mićunović, Dušanka Pešić-Jeknić, Veselin Barović and Branko Vujošević, he is on trial in Italy for cigarette smuggling.

Prepared regulations that favor the business of Mićunović and Grbović

The law on games of chance has been a controversial topic in Montenegro for years. At the time of Aćimović's visit, MANS accused the Ministry of Finance of favoring the "Montenegro Lottery", based on the monopoly provisions in the proposed amendments to the law.

According to MANS, the changes in the law at the time favored companies connected to the controversial Nikšić businessman Branislav Mićunović and Sava Grbović.

The provisions of the law at the time stipulated that a concession for lottery games could be granted to only one concessionaire and only if it was organized as a joint stock company, which the "Montenegro Lottery" is.

Also, it was foreseen that one of the key criteria for awarding concessions would be the number of previously issued concessions, and until then only the "Montenegro Lottery" had a concession for organizing lottery games for a period of up to ten years... Parliament of Montenegro to date, it has not adopted changes to the Law on Games of Chance, which was adopted in 2007.

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