The accused mercenary of the Kavača criminal clan, Serbian Dušan Jovanović Giba, obtained a Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) passport with a false identity from the Zvornik police in May 2022 and soon after flew from Sarajevo airport to Istanbul. He returned in mid-September, a few days after Jovan Vukotić, the leader of the rival Škalja clan, was killed in Istanbul, according to information from the Intelligence and Security Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina (OSA), as reported by the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIN) from Sarajevo.
Jovanović did not answer for the murder, but was arrested a year later when he found himself back in the Bosnian capital on suspicion of preparing to assassinate a Bosnian official. He told investigators that he had traveled to Istanbul with a forged Bosnian passport as Goran Stojanović. He claimed that he had only been there for a few days for a hair transplant. In fact, Jovanović spent three months in Turkey, according to data from the Bosnian Border Police.
Prosecutors and police suspect that Jovanović's murderous campaigns in the Balkans have been going on for years, writes Sarajevo-based CIN. Jovanović is one of the defendants on trial before the Higher Court in Belgrade for the murders of Alan Kožar and Damir Hadžić in July 2020 in Corfu, Greece. The murder, prosecutors claim, was organized by Veljko Belivuk, Darko Šarić and Radoje Zvicer. Jovanović was named as the direct perpetrator of the murder, according to the indictment from the Public Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime in Belgrade, CIN reports. They say they obtained the document with the help of colleagues from the Crime and Corruption Investigation Network (KRIK).
Several executioners from the Serbian and Montenegrin mafia participated in the murderous operation and its preparation. At least three members of the group possessed regular Bosnian passports with false identities, according to documents obtained by CIN Sarajevo journalists.
The murdered Kožar and Hadžić belonged to the Škalja clan. "The Kavački and Škalja clans are large criminal organizations that originated in Kotor, a Montenegrin coastal town. Their members have been killing each other for years for dominance in the European drug market," the text recalls.
It is not recorded that Jovanović ever used his BiH passport again after returning from Istanbul, and in September 2023, he entered BiH illegally and settled in Sarajevo, where, according to police information, his new target was located.
The Republika Srpska (RS) police received information that Jovanović received 15.000 euros in Serbia. He left ten thousand to his wife while he took five thousand to Sarajevo. "The money was given to him in order to liquidate the police officer from Sarajevo, Miroslav P. Most likely, it is Miroslav Plakalović, an officer of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) of the Sarajevo Canton," the Republika Srpska MUP information reads.
Plakalović confirmed to CIN that he was a possible target of a professional killer. He says that since entering Bosnia and Herzegovina, Jovanović had only been followed at the request of the Greek police, and that initially there was no request for his arrest. However, things changed. Serbian police learned that Jovanović was planning to kill a Sarajevo police officer and that he was supposed to pick up weapons in Mostar for that purpose.
"Therefore, we made the decision to arrest him," he says, adding that he was not disturbed by the information that Jovanović had come to BiH to liquidate him.
"It's become normal to me that no matter who comes, no matter what happens, they inform me that I'm a target," says Plakalović. This is the third time he has been targeted by killers from criminal circles, writes Sarajevo's CIN.
"A local criminal group from East Sarajevo activated two kilograms of explosives under his car in 2003. The assassins were never discovered. About fifteen years later, Aleksandar Macan, the murderer of two Sarajevo police officers in 2018, decided to liquidate Plakalović, who was a witness and investigator in this case. Macan later apologized in the courtroom, claiming that he did not mean it seriously when he announced in a conversation with his partner via the Sky application that he would kill Plakalović and eat his heart," the text recalls.
Despite the threats, Plakalović avoids police protection because, he says, he doesn't want to put his colleagues in danger. "I don't think there's any protection there, you can only do it preventively. And when everything is planned and arranged as they want, you can never protect yourself. Well, I live in Pale. It's a small place, everyone knows that I had problems. (…) When I park on one side of the building, five spaces on the left and five spaces on the right are free. That's how it is, unfortunately."
"The Bosnian must go"
During the investigation conducted against Jovanović by the Sarajevo Canton Prosecutor's Office (KS) in 2023 for passport forgery, the Serbian citizen denied that he was in Sarajevo for dirty business. He told investigators that he had fled persecution in Serbia and fear for his life, and that he had obtained a forged passport to hide.
However, his story did not hold water, writes CIN. Jovanović admitted that he crossed the border between Bosnia and Serbia at least once, using a passport from his home country that contained his real details. "Eventually, police found five thousand euros in his rented apartment in the 'Sarajevo Tower' building during his arrest, which reinforced suspicions that the information about his payment for murderous services in Serbia was accurate."
Transcripts of correspondence he conducted with friends via the Ana app indicate suspicions that Jovanović participated in planning at least one assassination on several occasions in recent years. Serbian services have thus provided police in BiH with reports of correspondence from 2021 between Jovanović and Dario Đorđević Dexter, a Serbian criminal who, according to media reports, was sentenced to life in prison in Austria for drug trafficking.
In one of such conversations in May 2021, Jovanović and Đorđević announced the liquidation of a certain Bosnian.
Jovanović writes to Đorđević: "We'll kill him. It has to be done, brother, no problem, we have to finish it or we've been painting for nothing. I'll take over. It'll be finished in seven days."
Đorđević replies: "When he leaves, everything is gone."
Jovanović was not alone in Sarajevo. On the same day, Darko Dulović was arrested in the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who had also managed to obtain a forged Bosnia and Herzegovina passport and driver's license at the Zvornik Police Department a year earlier.
Like Jovanović, he used a stolen identity. Dulović traveled under the name Đorđe Kuga, most often between Bosnia and Serbia, writes Sarajevo-based CIN.
The then Prosecutor of the Prosecutor's Office of BiH, Dubravko Čampara, informed his cantonal colleagues during their investigation that they were dealing with murderers, but that no case had been filed in BiH against Jovanović and Dulović.
The files from the Cantonal Prosecutor's Office that were provided to CIN reporters did not indicate that Dulović and Jovanović were acting together in Sarajevo. However, Plakalović claims that the police followed them and that the two met several times in a bar in Dobrinja, Sarajevo. They were brought before the Sarajevo Municipal Court on a joint indictment for passport forgery.
Both have serious criminal histories, CIN reports. Jovanović was sentenced in Serbia in 2014 and 2017 to a total of eight years and four months for aggravated theft, causing serious bodily harm, robbery, and possession of weapons and explosives, while Dulović received two and a half years in prison in Montenegro for drug trafficking. While in prison, Dulović was also tried for the murder of Belgrade criminal Siniša Milić, but was acquitted a few years later.
The two pleaded guilty in court in Sarajevo and were sentenced to eight months in prison early last year. After spending about four months in custody, the remaining part of their prison sentences was converted into a fine. They paid 11.900 KM each, hoping to be free. Jovanović was subsequently arrested as part of an investigation into the murders in Corfu.
Several months after the verdict against Jovanović and Dulović, police, acting on the orders of the Prosecutor's Office of BiH, arrested Marko Ikić from Zvornik and two other members of his group on suspicion of having acted as intermediaries for criminals from the region in issuing BiH identity cards and travel documents based on forged foreign documents. Their clients were members of organized crime groups who were wanted for aggravated murder and drug trafficking. The case was transferred to the District Public Prosecutor's Office in Bijeljina.
Miloš Pandrc from Belgrade, a convicted cocaine dealer and member of Darko Šarić's clan from Serbia, relied on a Bosnian connection when he arranged for BiH passports for friends and acquaintances in Loznica, across the street from Zvornik, in 2020. Pandrc himself owns a regular BiH passport in the name of Velimir Đokić, issued in Zvornik, CIN reports.
In one correspondence via the Sky app, Pandrc offered a colleague a BiH passport for around six thousand euros or a Slovak one for three times the price.
CIN journalists, the article says, have collected evidence showing that at least 60 leaders and influential members of criminal clans from the Balkans have obtained regular passports or ID cards in Banja Luka, Brčko, Zvornik, Sarajevo, Mostar and Goražde over the past ten years. Some of them have used them in operations to prepare and carry out murders abroad, CIN points out.
"Although they obtained BiH documents with the help of different groups in BiH, the way they did it remained almost identical. According to data from police investigations, the organizers of these operations had access to an old database where they could see which persons in BiH had never submitted a request for the issuance of personal documents. They would enter their data into forged ID cards to which they added their authentic photographs. They would mostly authorize persons in BiH to obtain citizenship certificates on their behalf. Members of the same groups would provide them with certificates of residence registration based on false rental contracts for apartments or houses. They would submit the collected documentation to the police, along with passport applications. On that occasion, they would take photographs and leave fingerprints," the text says.
Their personal documents were most often issued through an expedited procedure within a few days.
They are happy in front of the camera.
"The organizer of the murder of the leader of the Škalja clan, Jovan Vukotić, was Radoje Živković Žuti, another fake citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This Montenegrin from Nikšić is a prominent member of the Kavač clan. He had an Interpol arrest warrant hanging around his neck, so he needed a Bosnian passport with someone else's identity in order to go to Istanbul without fear of arrest," writes Sarajevo-based CIN.
It is added that he collected the passport at the Police Department in Banja Luka in July 2021. Živković had previously hired a group led by former Banja Luka police officer Dalibor Ćurlik to help him collect the documentation, according to reports from the Directorate for Organized and Serious Crime of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
"He first made a forged ID card in the name of Andrej Jović in Serbia, and then, with the help of members of the group in the Banja Luka City Administration, he obtained a Certificate of Citizenship in the name of Jović. Ćurlik provided Živković with a certificate of residence in his mother's house. This certificate is also one of the conditions for obtaining a passport. Ćurlik then took Živković to the Banja Luka Police Department, where they filled out the forms and submitted a request for the issuance of an ID card and passport in the name of Andrej Jović," CIN writes.
All of this was recorded by police surveillance cameras. "He was also recorded giving his fingerprints and photographed for new documents. Radoje Živković authorized Ćurlik to represent him, so this Banja Luka resident picked up a passport on his behalf in early July 2021, and two weeks later an ID card. According to Border Service records, Živković flew to Istanbul with a fake passport on July 24," the text adds.
There, in September of the following year, he was arrested on charges of organizing a group that had been monitoring and then liquidating Jovan Vukotić for a long time. Radoje Živković was sentenced to life imprisonment earlier this year.
During his arrest, Turkish police confiscated an ID card and a Bosnian passport in the name of Andrej Jović, but with Živković's photo.
Ćurlik helped at least four other criminals obtain Bosnian passports, CIN reports.
"Surveillance cameras in the Banja Luka police recorded Ćurlik in the company of Marko Petrović from Belgrade in mid-June 2021 while he was submitting a request for a passport in the name of Đorđe Suša. This criminal is recorded in the official records of the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs for violent behavior and endangering public traffic. Ćurlik, on Petrović's authority, collected the passport on June 17," it added.
The following month, CIN reports, the Banja Luka group was engaged in a new job – collecting documentation to issue a forged Bosnian passport for Almir Jahović, "an influential member of the Kavač clan from Montenegro." Jahović was wanted by Interpol for his involvement in the preparation of the murder of two members of a rival group in Bar.
On August 2, Jahović and Ćurlik applied for a passport in Banja Luka, and a day later, the former Banja Luka police officer, acting as an authorized representative, collected the travel document. During the passport handover, Jahović and Ćurlik were arrested in Banja Luka. Jahović was soon extradited to his home country, it is recalled.
Brčko connection for climbers
While the Kavač clan relied on a connection in Banja Luka, members of the rival Škalja clan obtained Bosnian passports in Brčko in 2020, through the mediation of Nikola Vein, a Serbian citizen who himself had a forged Bosnian passport, according to a report by the Brčko District police.
Through Vein, the following individuals, among others, received passports in Brčko: Ratko Živković, Krsto Vujić, brothers Risto and Filip Mijanović, Marko Martinović, Božidar Punošević, Igor Milojević, Dejan Pavlović, Vladimir Ulama and others.
"The information from the indictment about the murders in Corfu reveals, however, that Ratko Živković was a mole in the Kavčani clan in the Skaljar clan and that he constantly spied on members of this clan and informed members of the rival clan about their intentions and movements. According to the description in the indictment, he played a key role in locating the two Skaljar clans in Corfu because he communicated with them the entire time and thus discovered the place where they were hiding," writes CIN.
A police investigation showed that most of the criminals possessed forged Serbian ID cards.
"These personal documents contained authentic photographs of the criminals, but the data referred to other individuals, citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina who had never applied for Bosnia and Herzegovina documents. The police never discovered how Vein obtained data on Bosnia and Herzegovina citizens who had not exercised their right to obtain Bosnia and Herzegovina documents. They suspected that these were individuals who had access to the old database of issued documents. However, neither in this nor in most other investigations were those who provided information on desirable identities to the criminals found," it added.
Vein had previously been involved in the same business in Croatia, where he was sentenced in absentia to four years and ten months in prison by the Zagreb County Court in October last year. "In Croatia, he facilitated the sale of 75 passports to criminals, for which he earned a little over 7,5 million KM. The price of a passport ranged from 15 thousand to XNUMX thousand euros," CIN reports.
Croatia requested his extradition from Serbia, but that country did not comply with their demands. Bosnia and Herzegovina did not send such a request.
CIN journalists reportedly decided to look for Vein themselves at the registered address in an apartment building in the Borča neighborhood near Belgrade. Neighbors claimed he was there, but he did not answer the apartment's intercom. Vein eventually contacted reporters through a neighbor's phone. He claimed he was visiting his daughter outside Belgrade and would not be returning anytime soon. He denied any connection to the forged passports being issued in Brčko, and said he was unaware that he had been sentenced to prison in Croatia for the same things.
"I don't read you the newspaper," Vein told a CIN reporter.
Cattlemen from Bačka on red notices
According to the investigation by the Brčko Prosecutor's Office, Vein helped twelve criminals from Serbia and Montenegro obtain forged Bosnian travel documents by misusing the data of the same number of Bosnian citizens. Some of the citizens regularly experience inconvenience when crossing the border because the electronic border service system identifies them as criminals on the wanted list, CIN writes.
In the village of Bački Brestovac in Serbia, CIN reporters found three BiH citizens whose information had been misused. Their families had moved from Bijelo Bučje, a village near Teslić, to Bačka on the eve of the war and started a new life there. Although they retained their BiH citizenship, none of them had issued BiH travel documents.
Predrag Đurđević started a new life in Bačka Ravnica in the 90s, where he built a cow farm. He says he has never taken out a Bosnian passport or traveled outside the country, partly because he fears he might have trouble at the border.
"You know, until you prove it to someone, it's unpleasant, the question is where you'll end up," said Đurđević.
"His data was stolen in 2020 for the purpose of forging a passport by Ratko Živković, who is in Serbia's criminal records for murder, violence, and drug trafficking. According to the indictment in Belgrade, this Serbian was the main organizer of several murders on behalf of the Kavački clan. He needed Predrag's identity because an international arrest warrant had been issued for him," CIN writes.
Đurđević says he is not afraid because the killer used his identity, but he is embarrassed for his family and because the police asked him if he was a fraud.
"A real hell is going through the border due to the theft of personal information for his relative and neighbor in the village of Đurađ Trivunović. The identity of this cattle rancher from Bačka was stolen for the needs of the Bosnian passport of Dejan Pavlović, a member of the Skaljar clan from Belgrade, a convicted drug trafficker," writes CIN.
Trivunović first experienced great inconvenience at the end of August 2022 when he tried to enter BiH with his and his wife's family at the Šamac border crossing.
They told him to wait, the control, and I waited, says Trivunović, adding that a border police officer then approached him and told him that he was on an Interpol red notice.
His mother says that a check-up followed that lasted two hours: "My blood pressure shot up. The man calms me down, says, 'Ma'am, I'm sorry. I know, you're a mother, I know it's not easy for you. And on top of that, the little baby is crying. You're holding the little baby in the sun. It's even more difficult for me because of the child."
After checking, it was determined that Đurađ was not the criminal the police were looking for, so they entered BiH without hindrance. However, Trivunović experienced another setback two days later on his return to Serbia:
"And the same thing again. When I come back, I give my passport, and the passport turns red again."
After returning to Serbia, he called the criminal police in Brčko to report the problem and says that they promised him that he would no longer be detained at the border.
"They told me we've taken you off that now and you won't have any more problems. And I accepted it that way. And a year later I went again and the same thing happened again," Trivunović told reporters.
He had to hire a lawyer who provided him with a certificate from the criminal police in Brčko so that he could cross the border unhindered.
However, he is not convinced that this has solved his problem.
"And again it's not clear, again it's not definitely removed from the wanted list," says Trivunović.
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