Under Njegoševa Street in the heart of Podgorica, the mafia dug its way for a little over a month this summer - an underground tunnel about thirty meters long. In a short time, the underground strikers connected the rented basement and the depot of the High Court, and then, as is believed, they carried out part of the evidence - 19 weapons, which were kept for years in the Montenegrin temple of justice.
Even in the first days, when the secret passage was discovered on September 11, the Police Directorate and the prosecutor's office began to cooperate with the regional police because the first operational data indicated that the miners had arrived from neighboring countries.
The police quickly found the van, part of the tools, and then with the help of their colleagues from Serbia, and after the acting director of the Police Administration Nikola Terzic went to Belgrade, identified four people - fugitives from Loznica Brother i Milan Markovic, Dejan Jovanović and Vladimir Erić, for which Montenegro issued international warrants on the last working day of September.
The head of the Montenegrin police told "Vijesti" that they cooperated with Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in this case.
"I must emphasize that the cooperation with the police of Serbia and BiH in this case was at the highest possible level. Indeed, everything worked without error, which brought results," said Terzić.
Head of the Basic State Prosecutor's Office in Podgorica Dusko Milanović he told "Vijesti" that the cooperation of the regional police "was excellent" in that case.
"We gave orders to the Police Directorate and they cooperated with colleagues from the region in this case. "We proposed to the court to issue warrants for the fugitives, which the court accepted, and the Ministry of Justice confirmed the agreement," said Milanović.
The Ministry of Justice, in accordance with the Code of Criminal Procedure of Montenegro, in this case gave its consent to issue an international warrant for the suspect because the legal requirements have been met.
"Legal assistance in that case has not been requested so far, because the suspect is still being searched for, and the Ministry of Justice is competent to file an extradition request if we receive a notification about the deprivation of liberty of those persons in a country," the response of the Ministry of Justice of Montenegro states.
The case of digging a secret passage in the very center of Podgorica has not yet been completely solved because the investigators need to find out who organized the group, paid for the project, but also what was the motive behind the demanding underground undertaking this summer.
They cooperate when it suits them
The analysis of "Cooperation between Montenegro and Serbia in the fight against organized crime" shows that in previous years not everything functioned flawlessly, as in the case of the tunnel, which was worked on last year by a project associate at the Institute of Alternatives. Dragana Jaćimović i Milos Jovanovic, and within the regional project "Radar of organized crime in the Western Balkans".
"Politics plays an important role when it comes to the fight against organized crime in Serbia and Montenegro, and that factor creates that fight", was the key conclusion of that analysis.
The author of the project, Dragana Jaćimović, told the "News" that the analysis, which they did with their colleagues from Belgrade, showed that Serbia and Montenegro cooperate in the part that concerns the fight against organized crime, but that this formal cooperation mainly takes place in the part of providing legal aid.
"Essentially, these two countries do not cooperate in the area of organized crime investigations, information is not exchanged sufficiently, and institutions do not cooperate in real time and conduct parallel investigations. One of the data is that, for example, the countries did not jointly implement controlled deliveries, a secret surveillance measure that involves monitoring illegal transport across borders, e.g. drugs or other criminal matter, in order to intervene later. It is not known whether joint investigative teams have been formed to deal with organized criminal groups, although the signed bilateral agreements foresee this possibility, which has been announced for years," said Jaćimović.
The fact that it was difficult to make a statistical overview of the cooperation between the two countries is shown by the fact that the reports of the institutions do not contain the same type of information, and some data are not comparable.
Based on the available and comparative data of the two countries, the authors came to the conclusion that the judicial authorities of Montenegro more often turn to their Serbian colleagues in connection with cases related to organized crime and that in this aspect there is a possibility to improve the cooperation between the prosecutor's offices.
"Balkan Warrior" was the first test
A few years after Montenegro became an independent country in 2006, bilateral agreements on cooperation with the countries of the region were signed.
The first major test of the application of such agreements was the international operation - "Balkan Warrior" when, despite the signed agreements, there was a certain lack of trust, which led to numerous failures in the actions of the competent institutions in the case of smuggling over 2,1 tons of cocaine.
Poor cooperation and legal games in the first months, after a valuable cargo was discovered in the waters of the Atlantic, was used by the first accused Pljevljak Darko Saric, who, until the Interpol warrant was issued, was in Montenegro for months without police pressure, from where he escaped, and then before surrendering in March 2014, he was hiding for years...
The analysis, on which the Alternative Institute worked, showed statistical data according to which Podgorica and Belgrade conducted 2010 joint actions in cases of organized crime from 2022 to the first half of 21, and the most of them were during 2020, when joint actions were taken within four investigations. Over the past 12 years, the police organizations of those two countries have been jointly involved in 21 international investigations, with the most occurring in 2011 and 2020.
The monitoring of cooperation in this area was made impossible by the different records of prosecution organizations and the inability to search existing records by type of international legal aid, that is, by type of criminal offense. Judging by the available data, the judicial authorities of Montenegro often turn to their colleagues in Belgrade in connection with cases of organized crime.
Last year, 107 requests
The Prosecutor's Council only included statistical data on international legal assistance in criminal matters in the Work Report for 2022, which is allowed to them on the basis of multilateral and bilateral agreements.
In the reporting year, the Montenegrin prosecutor's offices sent requests to the countries of the region for the so-called "small" international legal assistance in 25 cases. The largest number of requests related to hearing suspects or witnesses, submitting documentation or undertaking procedural actions - obtaining bank data, computer data, special evidentiary actions, assigning criminal prosecution, taking over criminal prosecution...
During 2022, the Montenegrin prosecutor's office sent a total of 107 requests, and no feedback was received in a third of those requests, i.e. 36,64%.
Last year, as stated by the Prosecutor's Council, the State Prosecutor's Office cooperated with the countries of the European Union in 92 cases.
Serbia: International cooperation on cross-border crime
If there is one social sphere that was not affected by the disintegration of the former joint state, it is the area of organized crime. Moreover, one gets the impression that the more separate the nation-states are, the deeper and more strongly connected are the criminal entities within them.
Motivated solely by profit, criminal groups are able to put aside everything that political and social elites are not. For members of the criminal sphere, the Balkans are already open. Conflicts, when there are, are exclusively of a business nature.
An excellent reminder of how closely criminals from the former Yugoslav republics cooperate came recently from Spain, where the local police, with the cooperation of the US DEA, arrested five people. They intercepted a ship near the city of Vigo in the northwest of the country, on which they found 2,3 tons of cocaine. The drug, they said, belonged to the Balkan Cartel, a criminal group that has positioned itself as one of the most important in the business of smuggling cocaine from South America to Europe. The arrest was preceded by an investigation which established that the cartel's plan was to use Spanish ports as a transit point where they would transfer drugs from ocean containers to smaller boats.
Four months before the action in Spain, the cartel was "started" by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia. It was again an international action, where, in addition to the domestic police and the Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime, the police of the Netherlands and Belgium also participated through Europol. Thirteen people were arrested in the operation, among them were the leaders of this, as it was pointed out, "the biggest cartel in Europe".
Members of this group are suspected of having participated in the procurement and transportation of more than six tons of cocaine from South America to the countries of Western Europe in 2020 alone. In the statement of the Ministry of Interior, it was also pointed out that during the pre-investigation procedure, evidence related to the use of the Sky application was collected through international legal assistance.
This is precisely the key to the success of the Serbian investigative authorities in prosecuting these organized criminal groups. All major arrests of people suspected of organized crime were initiated or mediated through international cooperation.
In this sense, the key institutions are Europol and Eurojust. Serbia concluded a cooperation agreement with Europol in 2008, while a similar arrangement with Eurojust was established in 2019. These agreements enable the police and prosecutor's office in Serbia to directly cooperate and exchange information with all European countries, through the aforementioned agencies of the European Union.
Another common denominator in cases of organized crime in Serbia is the Sky application. Communication through this application is one of the key pieces of evidence in numerous court cases before the Special Department of the High Court in Belgrade, starting with the Belivuk case, through the new Šarić case, to the Vračara group. Without Sky, the evidence obtained through international cooperation, it is a big question whether there would be these proceedings before the Belgrade court today.
And although there has been a noticeable increase in the number of investigations and indictments concerning organized crime in the last two years, their impact on the wider picture is questionable. Namely, the recently published Global Organized Crime Index characterized Serbia as the European country with the most widespread organized crime, excluding Russia and Ukraine.
In the part of the report related to drug trafficking, it was pointed out that the most widespread market is heroin, bearing in mind that Serbia serves as a hub that connects the East and the West. The situation is similar with the narcotic drug cocaine, where Serbia is a transit and destination country. The report states that Serbian criminal groups cooperate with Montenegrin ones, and that they have created a criminal network that has increased the amount of cocaine that is distributed from South America to Europe. The consumption of this drug in the country, although increasing, is still below average. The most widely used illegal drug in the country is cannabis, and the reason for concern is the declining age of drug users. Apart from narcotics, Serbia is also a country of source, transit and destination for victims of human trafficking.
In addition to providing a clinical picture of organized crime, the global index simultaneously points the finger at the shortcomings of the fight against organized crime. In Serbia, selective application of the law has been observed.
"Even though high-level politicians have made statements against organized crime, the implementation of the legal framework related to organized crime is still ineffective, especially in politically sensitive cases," it said.
As noted, impunity allows Serbian gangs to be involved in drug and weapons markets at the local and transnational level without major consequences:
"Their profits are such that they have invested considerable resources in the legal economy. The connection between criminal actors and politicians in Serbia extends to media control, privatization and public procurement, making some criminals almost untouchable".
Bosnia and Herzegovina: The mafia does not look at nations and borders
It is well known to the public that criminal groups cooperate well in different countries and take advantage of flexible political and judicial systems. As well as the fact that they are stronger day by day, that it is harder to oppose them because they constantly adapt their tools, tactics and techniques, so they are, so to speak, always "a step ahead of the police and the prosecution".
"When we talk about the measures taken by the state, that is, state institutions, police and security agencies in the fight against organized crime, it is evident that there are legal and other prerequisites for this fight to be effective, and at all levels there are certain plans and strategies, especially when it comes to fight against organized crime. There is also support from international partners. However, it is evident through individual cases that this cooperation in certain, more complicated cases of international organized crime showed a weakness in the exchange of information. There was no hiding, but simply that is the system in Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially if the operations are conducted between the cantonal and entity ministries of interior affairs. It is logical that the flow of information is slower there. This is the part where there is room for inter-police cooperation to be at a higher level", he believes Safet Mušić, security expert.
On the other hand, the cooperation of criminal groups from BiH and the region is much better, Mušić believes.
"It is about cooperation that is based on financial benefit, so that these criminal groups can quickly and easily achieve cooperation, that is, to the desired goal, especially if it is drug and weapon smuggling. Those international criminal groups, we can safely say, cooperate more intensively and with greater success, which is more visible than when police agencies discover the acts committed by those groups", emphasizes Mušić.
His words are supported by the fact that the state prosecutor Jermin Pasic recently stated, stating that a large part of the criminal groups, which were discovered thanks to the decryption of messages on the Sky and Anom applications, communicated without ever meeting.
"These groups arranged jobs through messages and photos and everyone had their own task. "Some of them have never even met, but the work was done in an impeccable manner," prosecutor Pašić stated at the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time.
It should also be noted that BiH is eighth in Europe according to the Global Index of Organized Crime for 2023, and the number of recorded organized criminal groups operating in the fields of drug trafficking, human smuggling, economic crime, corruption, arms trafficking, computer crime, human trafficking and property crime in recent years it has been on the rise.
In BiH, the aforementioned report adds, there is a significant number of criminal groups that are very well networked with groups from other countries in the region, especially from Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia, and this is supported by the recent action of members of the MUP of Sarajevo Canton who were, thanks to the Intelligence and Security Agency of BiH, arrested Dušan Jovanović Giba i Darko Dulović, who allegedly arrived in Sarajevo to liquidate a police inspector. The duo are considered prominent members of the Kavački clan.
It is evident that criminal groups are looking for the path of least resistance, but the judicial system should and must show that it is not a political prisoner, and the fight against organized crime must be much more aggressive and effective.
The Marović case: Seven years of silence
A full seven years have passed since Montenegro requested the extradition of the last president of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro and the former second-in-command of the Democratic Party of Socialists, Svetozar Marović.
Montenegro is requesting his extradition in order to serve the prison sentence of 4 years and 9 months to which he was sentenced in 2016 for fraud, abuse of official position and embezzlement during the sale of state land and construction in Budva.
"I think the situation will end when the legal term for Marović's criminal prosecution expires. That's three more years," Marović's lawyer Zdravko Begović said this summer.
The Ministry of Justice of Montenegro stated in its response to the "News" that two requests for extradition and four urgent ones have been sent so far.
The warrant for Marović was issued in 2017, and in April 2019, the Ministry of Justice of Montenegro sent the first request to the Ministry of Justice of Serbia for the extradition of Marović.
At the end of 2020, Montenegro renewed its request for the extradition of Marović, and then emergency calls were also sent...
The Marović case was an issue during the first official visit of the new President of Montenegro, Jakov Milatović, with Aleksandar Vučić, during the meeting on July 10 in Belgrade. Milatović repeated the request that Marović be extradited to serve his sentence in Montenegro. Vučić replied that Serbia will consider the issue and forward an informed answer to Podgorica...
Ministry of Justice: The largest scope of cooperation with Serbia
Montenegro achieves high-quality international judicial cooperation with all countries in Europe and beyond, and the highest degree of cooperation is naturally achieved with the countries of the region, because there are no language barriers and no need for translation, and it is about similar legislation.
"The largest volume of cooperation is with Serbia, about 40%", this is stated in the answer of the Ministry of Justice of Montenegro, where it is explained that they have concluded three bilateral agreements with Serbia, North Macedonia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina - extradition agreements, legal assistance agreements in civil and criminal matters and agreements on mutual enforcement of decisions in criminal matters.
"We do not have concluded bilateral agreements with Slovenia, but regardless, the cooperation with Slovenia is very high-quality, to the extent that it exists", states the Ministry of Justice.
As they explained, legal aid between countries is provided by and at the request of judicial authorities (courts and prosecutor's offices), while the ministries of justice serve as central bodies of communication, i.e. mediators.
"It is important to note that Montenegro, together with all the countries of the region, has the possibility of extraditing its own citizens for criminal offenses in the field of organized crime, which confirms the quality of cooperation in that area, and certainly according to our data, the cooperation of the Special State Prosecutor's Office of Montenegro with the same prosecutor's offices is also of high quality. in the region, because we have no data to support the opposite thesis", says the Ministry of Justice of Montenegro.
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