A year after the establishment of the "Balkan Cartel Task Force", Europol managed to identify members of several major criminal organizations from the Western Balkans, using intelligence gathered from unblocked encrypted communications such as SKY and ENCROCHAT.
Claire Georges, Europol's head of media relations, said for Radio Free Europe that criminal organizations from the former Yugoslav republics are responsible for the transport and distribution of a significant part of drugs from Latin America to Europe, Africa and Australia.
"Drug trafficking, especially large-scale cocaine trafficking, is the core activity of most criminal organizations from the Western Balkans," concludes Georges.
Key members still at large
Saša Đorđević from the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime said that Balkan smugglers, including the Kavački and Škaljar clans, continue to smuggle cocaine internationally thanks to financial resources and capabilities, despite arrests and detection of communications via the SKY application.
He emphasizes that some key members are still at large and have shown resilience, although the clans have generally been weakened by arrests and infighting.
"Their main advantage is in the proven international logistics network, which allows them flexibility in work organization and structure", explains Đorđević.
Action "General"
Nine people were arrested in the last arrest operation called "General", which was carried out by the Special Police Department in Montenegro on July 17 with the help of Europol, the American FBI and the DEA.
The Special State Prosecutor's Office (STP) targeted 19 people, who are suspected of organizing an international criminal group, which participated in the smuggling of about 2,5 tons of cocaine during 2020 and 2021.
Europol estimated that those nine arrested held key positions in drug smuggling organizations in the Western Balkans.
And the SDT identified as the leaders of that group the alleged leader of the Kavački criminal clan, Radoj Zvicer (42) from Kotor and Vas Ulic from Podgorica.
Ulic was arrested that day, while Zvicer is on the run.
Zviter is the alleged leader of the Kavački criminal clan, one of the two most powerful in Montenegro.
The second is the Skaljar clan, its alleged leader was Jovan Vukotić, who was killed in September 2022 in Istanbul.
The two clans, which are named after settlements in Kotor, have been at war for supremacy in the drug market since 2014. More than 50 members of these groups were killed in mutual conflicts.
Who is Vaso Ulic?
Vas Ulic, who was arrested from Podgorica, was described for years by the Australian media as "Montenegro's Pablo Escobar". He lived in Australia for decades, and returned to Montenegro twenty years ago.
Nevertheless, the Australian media have been reporting for years that Ulic is the head of one of the world's largest drug cartels.
Ulic was arrested in Podgorica in August 2017 on suspicion of organizing the smuggling of 60 kilograms of the synthetic drug MDMA to Australia.
"Ulić has been one of the main targets of police processing for more than 20 years by several of the most important police services around the world," the police stated at the time.
Although Ulić denied being connected to these illegal businesses, two years later he signed a plea agreement with the Special Prosecutor's Office.
According to that agreement, he was sentenced to two years in prison and a payment of 50.000 euros each to the state and for humanitarian purposes.
The arrest of the president of the municipality of Budva
How is it "time" wrote earlier, the arrest of the president of Budva municipality, Milo Božović, caused a stir in the Montenegrin public, a new polarization on the political scene and opened up many questions about the criminal underworld.
The arrest took place in July last year, on the order of the Special State Prosecutor's Office (STP).
According to "Vijesti", which refers to the files of the SDT, Milo Božović was marked as a part Kavački clan, that is, the criminal structure (police-narco cartel) that existed within the institutions and worked for the benefit of the Kavčan leader Radoja Zvicer. The action carried out is a continuation of the large-scale arrests within the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in which more than twenty people have been arrested so far.
A group of policemen, alleged collaborators of the mafia, with whom the SDT connects Božović, is suspected of using the money obtained from cocaine smuggling to influence the results of the parliamentary elections in August 2020 and of appointing trusted people to top positions in the Police Directorate.
Milo Božović's lawyers say that the prosecution bases their client's criminal activities on Sky correspondence, but they explain that he is not explicitly mentioned by name in them.
According to "Vijesti", one of the controversial sentences that SDT believes Božović sent from his encrypted phone is: "Brother, we are outside the system, we are criminals".
The charges refer to the period when Božović was a member of the Parliament of Montenegro and a member of the Security Committee.
Effects of Sky communication
What kind of help did Sky Communications provide to the Montenegrin police in the fight against criminal clans associated with transatlantic cocaine smuggling, is a question to which RSE did not receive an answer from the Police Administration and the MUP of Montenegro even after three days.
Also, the police did not answer the question about the number of people arrested in Montenegro in the last five years connected to the Kavački and Škaljar clans.
The former Minister of Internal Affairs of Montenegro, Sergej Sekulović, believes that without the submitted transcripts of Sky and other applications, it would be difficult to initiate numerous proceedings.
He emphasized that this information was crucial for proving criminal acts due to the transnational nature of the clans and their infiltration into the government.
Source: RSE
