Blessed under the auspices of saints and angels from the frescoes in the crypt of the Temple of Saint Sava in Belgrade, Serbian bishops elected a new patriarch, unaware that an unholy man had sneaked into that underground hall and was peeking into their ballots.
Disguised in hidden places of the crypt, aimed at the tables where the bishops were sitting, secret cameras filmed the elective Assembly of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC), which was held on February 18, 2021. The cameras were ordered by a former state security official, close to members of the Balkan underworld.
Filming of the Assembly was expressly prohibited. Participants received a written guarantee from the Holy Synod of Bishops, a kind of church government chaired by the patriarch, that they would have spiritual peace and privacy during the voting.
The bishops were nevertheless filmed, and the video footage was delivered to Ljuban Ećim, former deputy head of the Republika Srpska State Security Center in Banja Luka, an hour after the election of Porfirije Perić as the new Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
This former police officer is a friend of Luka Bojović, a drug gang leader from Serbia who returned to the country in 2022 after serving 10 years in prison in Spain for drug trafficking. Both were close associates of Željko Ražnatović Arkan, the murdered commander of Serbian paramilitary units and multiple convicted criminals in European countries.
Ećim was sentenced to a year and a half in prison in Serbia for forging a passport and possessing an illegal weapon. He claimed that the gun was a gift from Arkan. According to the indictment, he visited his family in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) under false names − Milan Njegovan or Momčilo Joksimović.
This convict led the operation to install hidden cameras, according to his correspondence via the Sky app with a man who presented himself as the owner of "Sion Company", a Belgrade-based video surveillance and security company.
According to the Serbian Register of Companies, the owner and director of this company is Ivan Savić.
Ećim used the Sky code EGQOLR in his correspondence, and his interlocutor used the code 50NEN1. Ećim's code was identified by the police and provided to the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the case of an investigation against Siniša Rakita, an officer of the Intelligence and Security Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina (OSA). He was suspected of providing confidential information to Ećim and criminal groups in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The owner of "Sion Company" and Ećim communicated via written and voice messages, exchanging photographs from the Temple of Saint Sava, photographs of the place where they were and various secret recording devices.
From their conversation, it is learned that certain church dignitaries and officials connected to the authorities in Serbia allegedly helped them get jobs at the Temple, which gave them access to filming locations.
Contracts on business in Belgrade between the Patriarchate of the Serbian Orthodox Church and this company, obtained by journalists Center for Investigative Reporting (CIN) from Sarajevo, confirm the allegations from the correspondence.
Sky is a mobile phone application that was used for secret encrypted communication. It was most often used by members of criminal organizations, but also by anyone who feared that their business might be exposed. Sky was decrypted by the European Police Agency EUROPOL in 2021, but the monitoring of communications continued.
Tomb of the Patriarch and the Episcopal Chamber
Even before the official decision on the location of the Council, the church authorities had decided that the election of the patriarch would be held for the first time in the crypt, an underground room that is also a church in the Temple of Saint Sava in Belgrade's Vračar and the resting place of the previous patriarch.
However, some bishops did not like these announcements. Five days before the session, a letter was sent to the Holy Synod of Bishops, the church government made up of bishops who elect the patriarch, from four influential members of the Church: Bishop Justin of Žica, Ignjatij of Braničevo, Joanikij of Budimlje-Nikšić, and Teodosij of Raška-Prizren.
In the letter, they write that they are concerned about information that the Assembly for the election of the patriarch could be moved from the Patriarchate building where it has been held for decades. They warned that the crypt is covered with cameras and does not provide privacy.
After the letter was made public, some priests and theologians ridiculed the four bishops' remark in the media and on social media, stating that cameras cannot be an obstacle to the secrecy of the elections. They said that they did not have the necessary resolution to record the text on the ballots and that they would be turned off and covered up anyway.
At its session on February 10, 2021, the Synod decided that the Assembly would be held eight days later in the crypt of the Temple to make it easier to comply with epidemiological measures to protect against the coronavirus. The space was larger, so the participants of the Assembly could easily keep a safe distance.
Until then, church dignitaries had largely not adhered to these measures during prayers and other religious gatherings, despite the high risk of the rapid spread of the infection.
To appease the dissatisfied, the Synod sent a notice after the session that the vicar bishop and elder of the Temple of Saint Sava, Bishop Stefan Šarić, was tasked with ensuring that all internal cameras in the crypt were turned off and covered.
The Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church is elected by the bishops at the Holy Assembly of Bishops. 43 bishops participated in the work, and about 30 of them were eligible to be elected patriarch because they had led dioceses, administrative units of the Church, for at least five years.
In the first round, each bishop writes three names on paper, and then the election commission counts the votes and selects the three with the highest number of votes.
In the crypt of the Temple of Saint Sava on February 18, 2021, the choice fell on: Metropolitan Porfirije of Zagreb-Ljubljana, Bishop Irinej of Bačka, and Bishop Jefrem of Banja Luka. Their names were later placed in three envelopes, and they were placed in the Gospel - the part of the New Testament and the Bible that describes the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
Then a monk, previously elected by the Serbian Orthodox Church Assembly, draws an envelope and thus elects the patriarch. This so-called "apostolic method" of election was introduced by the Church in the late 60s to reduce the possibility of communist authorities influencing the election of the patriarch.
The camera sees through the speaker grille
However, before the church government promised to turn off the cameras, preparations began in the crypt to install a parallel, covert recording system. The day after the four bishops' protest letter, Ljuban Ećim and the owner of the "Sion Company" discussed the installation of secret cameras via the Sky application.
They considered placing them in microphones on the bishops' desks, but the idea turned out to be a bad one because, they agreed, any movement of the microphone would lead to a change in focus on the cameras.
"It's very close and any movement will disrupt the focus on what needs to be done," the company owner noted.
They also considered installing cameras in lamps that they would place on tables, but the owner of the "Sion Company" came up with a better solution after touring the crypt.
He sent Ećim a photo of the existing public address system with the message:
"This is a speaker that is on almost all the poles. We can pack everything into it."
Ećim agreed, but he was interested: "Can we peek into every corner?", to which he received a new photograph showing a graphic floor plan of the crypt with about 40 tables for bishops drawn on it.
"We have columns above all the tables. We just need to add speakers so that they are on all sides," the owner of "Sion Company" specified.
From their conversation, it could be concluded that a secret camera system was to be installed in the crypt, controlled via a Wi-Fi connection. The system was to be separate from the existing one, while the cameras would have their own memory cards.
CIN reporters have determined that the speakers from the photo from the Sky correspondence are still in the crypt.
Three days later, the company owner informs the former security guard about a possible solution - installing inconspicuous and functional cameras in the speakers:
"We found a camera that can see through the net. There's no hole in the net. You can't see anything, and the picture is great."
Around noon on the day of the Parliament, while voting was still underway, Ećim asked the owner of the “Sion Company” via Sky for information about the recording. He replied that he would take the recording and deliver it to him personally.
"We need a copy," Ećim wrote.
"I'll give you an external HDD so we can copy it as much as you want," the company owner replied.
An hour after the proclamation of the new patriarch, they met in a Belgrade restaurant to exchange footage from the Parliament.
CIN reporters contacted several people, including his former lawyer, in an attempt to reach Ljuban Ećim, but were unsuccessful. He was not at the locations in Belgrade where he was reported, according to court documents, and he did not respond to messages left by reporters at the Banja Luka cafe run by his son.
It's possible without the Synod.
Along with resolving technical problems with covert recording, the two interlocutors also negotiated details regarding the offer and contract with the Serbian Orthodox Church for video surveillance services and the delivery of speakers and cameras for the conference system.
According to documentation obtained by CIN journalists, in June 2020, “Sion Company” was awarded the contract to install complete video surveillance at the Temple of Saint Sava, but the contract did not provide for the management or monitoring of this system.
The election of the patriarch was approaching, so this problem was being resolved ahead of the Council itself in February 2021. However, the Church needed another acquisition for the largest gathering - an electronic conference system. This system usually includes a network of speakerphones, cameras, and screens that allow participants to follow the event without missing a beat.
Ećim suggested via Sky that their offer should be the cheapest and that he tell the then head of the Temple and the chairman of the Bidder Selection Commission, Bishop Stefan Šarić, to choose the most favorable one. The owner of “Sion Company” informed him that, as agreed, he had submitted the offer to the Parish Home for Bishop Stefan and that inside the folder he had “written a few things” that Ećim had told him.
The same day, "Sion Company" was invited to send the contract to the Patriarchate's email, and Ećim told the company owner to "call Škrinjar" and bring the invoices and the contract.
Dragan Škrinjar was a member of the Bidder Selection Commission of the Committee for the Completion of the Temple of Saint Sava, and in church documents from 2019 he signed as a representative of the Presidency of the Republic of Serbia. Representatives of the authorities participated in the committees and commissions for the construction of the Temple, as the Government donated millions of dollars for its completion.
Škrinjar did not respond to calls from reporters, and Stefan Šarić, now the head of the Podvorje of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Moscow, the official representation of the Church to the Russian Orthodox Church, refused to speak to CIN.
The work was quickly put into motion. The owner of “Sion Company” complained to Ećim that the contract had not gone through the usual approval procedure in the Synod and was surprised that the documents should be signed on behalf of the Church by an official in the Patriarchate, Dejan Simeunović. “That’s ridiculous, Dejan has no function here,” he wrote to Ećim.
"What do you care who signs when you get the money," he replied. "You don't care if it has a function."
Simeunović denied to CIN that he had any contacts regarding the assignment of this job.
The contract was legalized by the future patriarch. On the eve of the Council, “Sion Company” and the then Bishop Porfirije Perić, as a representative of the Temple, entered into a contract for the monitoring and maintenance of the video surveillance system, with a monthly fee of 13.260 euros.
This amount was previously agreed upon in correspondence between Ećim and the owner of the Belgrade company that won the job. The contract was concluded for 10 years, which will allow the “Sion Company” to generate 1,59 million euros in revenue by 2031.
Dejan says he can, but Mira doesn't want to pay.
Although its delivery was not contracted, the electronic conference system was installed in the crypt and the participants of the Assembly had the opportunity to use it, as shown by photos and videos taken before the meeting.
From the correspondence it was possible to learn that the Synod had not approved these deals, which was why the owner of “Sion Company” was in a dilemma. However, Ećim assured him that this would not be a problem because “Dejan” or just “D”, as he was addressed in communication, had approved such a deal.
This Dejan, it seems, was far more influential than his namesake Simeunović, and such a status in the Patriarchate is enjoyed by Dejan Nakić, a close associate of the former and current patriarch.
He only told reporters that he did not deal with these matters and that they were the responsibility of the bishop. He did not want to talk about anything else.
Things had to be legalized, so the contract for the delivery and installation of the system was concluded on March 11, 2021, about twenty days after the election of the new patriarch. It was signed again by Porfirije, but this time as the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The system cost the Church 18 million dinars, or 150.000 euros, according to the contract in CIN's possession.
It turned out that not everyone in the Patriarchate was of the same opinion about the way things were being done, so the owner of the "Sion Company" spent days trying to collect money for the work done.
“Brother, Mira won’t sign those two invoices. Mira won’t pay because she doesn’t have a separate contract for each of them,” he complained to Ećim in a voicemail over Sky in early March. “She lectured me for half an hour about it and in the end she won’t pay until the Synod approves.”
Upon learning that it was "Mira from Finance", Ećim assured him that everything would be paid for.
After these deals, the Patriarchate's doors were open for continued cooperation. By the end of 2021, “Sion Company” had concluded four more deals with the Church: the procurement of a simultaneous translation system and a more advanced digital radio communication system, and additional video surveillance equipment was procured twice.
The total value of the contract was around 236 thousand euros, and it was signed on behalf of the Church by Patriarch Porfirije and Bishop Stefan Šarić.
In an interview with CIN reporters, Ivan Savić confirmed that he is the owner and director of the company and that he does business with the Church.
We spoke with him at a company in the Belgrade area. He refused to record the conversation, but said he did not know who Ljuban Ećim was and that he had nothing to do with hidden cameras.
There are eight cameras in the crypt of the Temple that were installed long before he got his first job in June 2020, he explained, and which his company turns off two days before each session of the Parliament, by order of the Church.
He said he was almost certain that there were no cameras in the speakers on the walls of the crypt, but that he might open them anyway to verify the findings of the CIN journalists. He would not inform them of the results, he concluded.
CIN reporters spoke with Savić for a little over half an hour. After listening to three voice messages that the owner of "Sion Company" sent to Ećim via Sky, they got the impression that the voice and diction of the person in the audio messages were irresistibly reminiscent of Savić's.
CIN attempted to speak with Patriarch Porfirije ahead of his guest appearance at the Faculty of Law in Banja Luka in March 2026. He kindly approached reporters upon request, but organizers did not allow an interview. CIN then asked the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Synod, as well as the Serbian Orthodox Church's Public Relations Service, in writing about controversial matters ahead of and during the 2021 election Assembly, but no answers were forthcoming.
Journalists also tried to speak with some church dignitaries, such as Metropolitan Joanikije of Montenegro and the Littoral and Metropolitan Grigorij of Germany. None of them wanted to speak.
Blagoje Pantelić, theologian and editor of the Teologija.net portal, and Vukašin Milićević, former parish priest of the Temple of Saint Sava in Belgrade, have been speaking and writing for years about the connections between the Church, the political regime of Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, and the Serbian underworld.
In January 2026, both were punished with the harshest punishment for public statements in which they criticized the work of the church leadership and its relationship with the authorities: the Church Court of the Belgrade-Karlovac Archbishopric punished them with permanent exclusion from the religious community.
The two were not familiar with the Sky messages, but CIN's findings did not surprise them. Milićević says that, according to information from church circles, the secret recording was aimed at those who were wavering about the candidates. He claims that he heard from several sources that the election of the patriarch was preceded by a campaign in which some members of the Serbian government played a decisive role.
"They visited all those they knew they could influence, which was probably two-thirds of the bishops, and they had specific requests," says Milićević.
He explains that he has been saying for years that organized crime is a problem that has usurped the state of Serbia and the Church.
"So, these are all tentacles of the same organized crime group, and that's how the mafia works. It doesn't work on trust, but by blackmailing each other, right? So the purpose of duplicating the footage is probably to simultaneously protect those who were directly involved in its creation and in this whole complex of illegal activities, to provide them with some kind of guarantee for their future safety, that they won't be prosecuted and all that," says Milićević.
Pantelić believes that after receiving information about the filming, the Church should immediately form a commission to determine what actually happened: who did it, why they did it, and whether the hidden cameras are still in the crypt.
"For me, it's terrible, outrageous, that the election of the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church appears in Sky correspondences, and that it's not just some cafe chat between two people using Sky phones and, like, hey, you know what happened, but rather, these are people who organized an action, which is part of that process. That's a scandal in itself," Pantelić thinks.
On the day of the election, Ećim also spoke to friends from Bosnia and Herzegovina via Sky. One of them, from Banja Luka, sent him a short message: "Porphyrije".
To this, Ećim boasted: "He was our first pick. (…) We knew two days ago."
War crimes indictment in Bosnia and Herzegovina
In December 2019, the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina filed an indictment against Ljuban Ećim for crimes against humanity and war crimes against the civilian population in Kotor Varoš. A month later, the Court of BiH dismissed the indictment. During the hearing, Ećim stated that he could only respond to the charges after the Republika Srpska, or Bosnia and Herzegovina, released him from the obligation to keep state and official secrets. The court considered that the procedure had not been followed and that Ećim had not given a statement.
The prosecution has not yet had the opportunity to correct this mistake because Serbian authorities claim that they are no longer able to find the Ećims at known addresses.
This former security officer is suspected of having participated, as the deputy and de facto commander of the Special Police Unit of the Banja Luka Security Services Center, in a joint criminal enterprise against the civilian population in the Kotor Varoš area from early June 1992 to mid-1994.
The indictment describes how dozens of civilians were killed in military and police actions, hundreds were forcibly evicted, imprisoned and tortured, and property, cultural monuments and religious buildings, including 15 mosques and eight churches, were looted and destroyed. Among the victims were women, children and religious officials.
Ećim is a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia and an international arrest warrant is in force for him.
See more:
Download the app and follow the news
FOLLOW US ON
