BALKANS: Smokescreen on Crime Lifts

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Jun 15 2007 (IPS) - State involvement in organised crime through the 1990s stands exposed following the arrest of 11 persons in a giant cigarette smuggling operation.

The smuggling business, which involved top institutions and leaders of Serbia and neighbouring Montenegro, deprived the state budget of more than 1.3 billion dollars, and made a small circle of about 20 families enormously rich.

“And this is only the tip of the iceberg where the tobacco mafia is concerned,” organised crime special prosecutor Slobodan Radovanovic told journalists last week after the first eight persons were arrested. “No mafia member will escape our operation.”

The arrests of the first eight, and then three later, confirmed what was described in the ‘White Book on Organised Crime’ compiled by the Serbian police in 2003. It provided details on the smuggling of cigarettes through the region with the blessing of ruling circles at the time.

The arrested persons have now spilled the beans.

The companies Tref owned by Bojana Bajrusevic and Mia owned by Stanko Subotic were pinpointed as key players. The key official involved was the head of customs at the time, Mihalj Kertes, now in custody.

Bajrusevic worked on behalf of Marko Milosevic, son of former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. Marko’s mother Mira Markovic is also named in the latest indictment by the special prosecutor as the one on whose orders to Kertes truckloads of cigarettes were allowed freely into Serbia.

Mira Markovic denies this. She said in a statement from an unspecified location abroad: “I had nothing to do with smuggling of cigarettes. That is below all levelsàI will not say where I am; I am not telling it to anyone. No, I will not answer any subpoena by a court.”

Stanko Subotic was a shady businessman of the 1990s. Other than Kertes no one has been arrested. “They will be wanted by Interpol,” Radovanovic said. “We might ask for freezing their assets both at home and abroad.”

Milosevic’s widow and son are believed to be in Russia. Subotic is believed to be in Montenegro, where he has invested millions of dollars this year in development of the booming tourism industry.

Subotic is a close friend of former Montenegrin president Milo Djukanovic. Djukanovic faces an Italian inquiry into cigarette smuggling.

The police say customs officials allowed shipments into the country without control. Cigarettes were later sold on the streets without any duty or tax paid to the state. The profits went directly into the hands of companies that imported consignments that were allowed in as “goods”.

Serbs are heavy smokers, and many could not give up smoking even in difficult financial times. Serbian consumption remains about a billion 20-cigarette packs annually, more than 2.7 million packs a day.

The business went unimpeded until the end of 2000, when Milosevic fell from power. That brought Serbia back into the family of nations, with strict regulation introduced into all spheres of trade and business. International sanctions in force since 1992 were lifted in 2000.

But while the police and prosecution claim success, some analysts doubt the real achievement.

“It is almost seven years since Milosevic fell from power, more than a year since he died (in the detention unit of the international war crimes tribunal), the main perpetrators had time to flee, this is too slow and too late,” Milan Culibrk, a journalist specialising in organised crime commented on popular B92 radio.

But criminologist Dobrivoje Radovanovic says police action could only come in a changed political climate.

“The Serbian government now has a stable majority of pro-democracy forces in parliament, and is no longer under pressure of Milosevic’s Socialists,” he told IPS. “Besides, cooperation with Russia is somehow better, and we might now expect a response from Moscow.”