Montenegro Social Briefing: Crime Issue Ivica Bakota

ISSN: 2560-1601

Vol. 6, No. 3 (ME)

April 2018

Montenegro Social briefing: Crime Issue Ivica Bakota

1052 Budapest Petőfi Sándor utca 11.

+36 1 5858 690 Kiadó: Kína-KKE Intézet Nonprofit Kft. [email protected] Szerkesztésért felelős személy: Chen Xin Kiadásért felelős személy: Huang Ping china-cee.eu Introduction A public assassination of Drazen Cadjenovic that happened a month ago (March 28) in afternoon hours in front of a dozen witnesses reminded the country that the criminal gangs and criminal related violence is one of the main problems Montenegro so far haven’t successfully tackled. According to the media, the assassination has been related with ongoing feud between Skaljari and Kavac clan, the two fractions of drug smuggling criminal group originating from the two eponymous neighborhoods in Kotor. Only two days later, the second assassination occurred in the center of Podgorica. In front hundreds of people (most of them young children) the murderer shot Milos Sakovic, a Skaljare clan member, also killing innocent bystander Radivoje Jovanovic. In the aftermath of these very blatant public assassinations Montenegro`s Chief of Police Slavko Stojanovic resigned and PM Markovic convened urgent meeting of National Security Council to immediately prevent gang related wars to make further impacts on the public safety and to reassure domestic and foreign media about the security situation in Montenegro. Nevertheless, the assassinations had already caught the attention of the regional media. Croatian and Serbian newspapers had published several articles depicting Montenegro as “Mexico in our neighborhood”, reporting that due to belated and inadequate reaction of the police Montenegrin mafia started to “execute people in the middle of day, in the main square among innocent citizens”. Some articles tried to deplore government`s response as conducive to the second public assassination, some even nuanced government`s involvement in the clan feud. Contrary to the first expectations, in the last month there were no assassination follow ups, at least not in public. Coordinated police and SPO work has been fruitful in deterring the actions that could destabilize public order. However, it has been less than a month since the last assassination and it is hard to say whether the feud was successfully derailed to the underground and can a series of public assassinations unexpectedly reoccur in the near future.

1 Notwithstanding recent pubic deliberations on the impact the criminal network has on the Montenegro`s government and the society as a whole (allowing certain exaggerations that were in place due to the ongoing presidential campaigning), this report will sum up the phenomenon of organized crime in Montenegro and detect some impacts it has on the society.

The phenomenon that survived the 90s There are two (main) conditions that were conducive to the establishment of the well-organized crime in Montenegro. The first is the specific economic situation following the dissolution of Yugoslavia. During the first eight years after 1991, Montenegro practically had no major foreign investments, small population could not support urbanization and industrialization and basically relied on federal subsidies and few, federal-directed capital industrial capabilities. Due to these facts, embargo that was imposed on Yugoslavia in 1992 structurally was more detrimental to Montenegro than Serbia. It was estimated that during 1993 two thirds of the Montenegrin population lived below poverty line. With the low productivity and almost non-existent foreign reserves, a life-saving source of revenue for a small Montenegro was found to be in the black market. Having a favorable geographical location Montenegro became a hub for smuggling activities from Italy and Albania, specializing in smuggling cigarettes and petrol for Yugoslav market. Under international trade embargo and high inflation Belgrade tacitly approved smuggling activities which soon became de facto legalized practice under control of Montenegrin political elite. As a matter of fact, it was run as a smuggling oligopoly under the control of security service and ruling political party and was even considered as a crucial revenue for financing public sector. During the course, many stakeholders of this oligopoly gradually became independent and started to pursue more lucrative illegal activities. In the first years following the stabilization and economic independence of Montenegro (1997), the tobacco& petrol smuggling halted and the smuggling business

2 looked for different sources of revenue. From this period Montenegrin mafia (as it will become known by world media) has already established business networks in drug smuggling and expanded throughout the Western Europe. In 1999, there were official reports on several Montenegrins allegedly behind 2 billion USD worth cocaine smuggling operations and European media reported the presence of Montenegrin mafia in Germany, Denmark and Sweden. Darko Saric, the first known narco-boss, in 2000-03 period established so called “Colombian connection”. It was cocaine supply chain from Colombia to South European markets, allegedly controlling a big share of cocaine distribution in Spain and Italy. The particular “success” of Montenegrin mafia on the international level can be attributed to, second condition, i.e. internal organization of its criminal network abroad. Since private& clean sector was virtually non-existent in Montenegro, private incentive went mostly illegal, being sustained by traditional nepotism and political patronage which seriously swollen the number of the people involved along the supply chain. In the return, the illegal activities were “legitimized” by frequent cash injections into legal businesses and public sector through which normal functioning of the state was sustained. The subsequent “internationalization” of Montenegrin mafia followed migration patterns of Montenegrins to Europe but also brought the same organizational structure within the expat communities. Family and clan connections abroad were as important for establishing stable and undisrupted networks as patronage system was for maintaining top-down line of command. After 2002, Montenegrin criminal networks operated in Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Slovenia and Spain and mostly engaged in extortion, protection racket, drug trafficking and loan-sharking activities. The spread of the Montenegrin criminal network relied on blending into larger criminal network covering all gangs from the Balkans and establishing cells throughout the particular European country. The first was due to the simple fact that less- troublesome turf and revenue division but also better organization would be

3 enhanced with people sharing the same mentality and same immigration history and experiences; the latter meant foremost business expansion but also giving the leeway for the illegal activities to transform into small and detached legal businesses.

Clans In spite the fact that the Montenegrin police has documented more than 700 criminals and dozen criminal clans within Montenegro with connections throughout the Europe, the link they have with their international cells is so far very murky. According to Pobjeda, they are organized as cartels with a strong hierarchical structure and top-down chain of command within and also rather well delimited turf division in between, which mostly saved Montenegro from the escalation of gang related violence so far. In terms of the horizontal organization, there are evidenced four big groups (clans), with increasingly loose connections between each other. The first and oldest is Podgorica clan with five prominent gangs operating throughout Montenegro, Albania and Serbia. The Djurasevic Brothers “specialized” in drugs, stolen cars and weapon smuggling from Albania. The Dresaj Brothers concentrated on heroin trafficking and are believed to be in charge of smuggling of illicit drugs across Albania-Montenegrin border. So called Djokovic organization controls human trafficking (mostly Albanians and Kosovars into Western Europe) However, the police also believe the organization is involved in smuggling of recent Syrian and Afghan immigrants through the Balkan route. The Scekaric Clan is rather larger organization, allegedly with established connections with local political elites. The Lamburic Brothers are organized in the vertical manner, operating mostly abroad and (in Montenegro) dealing with a drug trafficking and money laundering. According to the police records, the most of the gang-related violence is connected with the Bar Cartel. Although well connected with Podgorica Clan and with established networks to organized criminal groups in Serbia, Albania,

4 Italy, Western Europe and South America, the path through which this cartel has overtaken much of the Montenegro`s underground has been filled with street violence, public assassinations and other intimidating criminal acts. The Bar Cartel has been connected with the murder of Police Commissioner S. Scekic in 2014, assassination of Legaj in 2015, etc. It is believed that the Bar Cartel controls cocaine trafficking in Montenegro and is the largest criminal organization in the country. The “Kvartasi” group from Niksic are also one of the oldest criminal groups established in the 90`s, believed to remain the same (loose) organizational structure, very localized and less “specialized” criminal activity (including drug trafficking, loan-sharking, gambling, extortion, etc.). Two other groups, so called Rozaje Group and Berane mob are originating from the North regions and deal almost completely in trafficking heroin. Contrary to “Kvartasi” group they mostly operate abroad, hence the size and the organization of the group is largely unknown. Besides the four big groups headed from Montenegro, there are groups directly originating from Montenegrin communities abroad, primary Serbian capital Belgrade. Distinction between Belgrade based Montenegrin mafia and Serbian mafia is very loose. Due to their origins, Serbian media simply called some prominent criminals as members of Montenegrin mafia even though there are no clear links suggesting their subordination to an organized crime organizations headed from Montenegro. It is therefore believed that these “diaspora” groups set their cells in Kotor and engaged in cocaine trafficking business directly under a command of Belgrade drug-trafficking syndicate. Over a time, the cell became more autonomous but retained better links with Belgrade based mafia than with other four Montenegro based groups. It expanded into Kotor clan with Skaljari and Kavac as the two most prominent groups. The ongoing war between these two groups that caused recent violence in Podgorica, is believed to originate in 2014 over 200 kg of cocaine that allegedly belonging to Skaljari group was stolen by Kavac group member. Since then, “Skaljari”

5 group tried to retaliate but the feud was largely downplayed until recent assassinations.

Government and mafia: impact on Montenegro`s society The concerns about the Montenegrin mafia and its impact on the security of the nation that were sparkled by the recent public assassinations are mainly concentrated on the two key questions: First, can the government leverage between the different groups of criminal groups within Montenegro to secure public order? Second, what are the (social) costs in maintaining the consensus on avoiding public violence that has so far been largely respected by the criminal networks? In order to answer the first question, one should bear in mind that the government and government agencies (National Security Agency, SPO, etc.) due to “specific history of cooperation with criminal groups” are still believed to keep a close eye on the activities of Montenegrin mafia and possess certain leverage (if not ultimate control, as suggested by some opinions) to mediate and downsize the conflicts within opposing groups of Montenegrin mafia. However, Montenegrin mafia went through rapid evolution in the course of the last 20 years, it became more internationalized, more complex in terms of organization, decentralized and detached from Montenegro`s main criminal groups. As a result, the government has to invest more efforts in order to keep the conflict of increasingly more criminal actors out of the public sight. Henceforth, the reason why the government didn’t react more expediently to prevent the second public assassination in one week is assumed to be connected with the fact that “Skaljari” and “Kavac” groups are directly linked with Belgrade syndicate and have less horizontal connections with other Montenegrin-based networks. The social costs of maintaining the “non-violence consensus” is a more complex issue. It directly involves the ability of the government to control and mediate the underworld conflicts, but on the comprehensive level it involves more assertive and repressive measures in tackling the problem of the organized

6 crime and decisively cutting the links it has with the political elite. This problem is largely pertained in the reform of judiciary, the cornerstone issue in Montenegro`s EU accession negotiation process, which the government halfheartedly started to implement and still has very unpredictable prospects.