Balkan drug cartels have extended their tentacles to Rotterdam, Europe's largest port. In the Netherlands, they cooperate with the infamous Moroccan mafia. Some of that can be seen from the indictments and correspondence on the Sky app. However, "Vremen" sources say that this is only the tip of the iceberg, and that Western investigators do not really believe in the cooperation of their Serbian colleagues.
Za "Time" from Rotterdam, Antwerp, Amsterdam and Belgrade
"Long live comrades... drink one for me," wrote Deniz Mihajlović in a chat with partners in a business in which, unlike spelling, drug and money. (except for the first, the messages exchanged by criminals in this text are proofread for ease of understanding)
That chat took place in Sky application, the favorite chat program of white-world criminals, until the application was hacked by the Dutch, Belgian and French police.
The photo Mihajlovic responded to shows two people in a car toasting with champagne. The driver shows three fingers, patriotically. Another picture shows a man with razor-shaved eyebrows smiling and holding a bottle of sparkling wine in the back seat.
It was an August evening in 2020, somewhere in the Netherlands. Mihajlović and his colleagues were obviously celebrating the fact that a container with bananas arrived in the port of Rotterdam, on the ship Cosco Shipping Danube from Ecuador. Among the bananas, these criminals delivered 743 kilograms of cocaine, worth around 56 million euros, to Europe's largest port.
A day later, around 9:30 in the morning, a message arrived on the phone of Miroslav Starčević, a former police officer from Loznica. "Good morning, drag", it said. "What are those crazy people doing for the box, they are already celebrating all night." The sender of the message was Radoje Zvicer, one of the most wanted fugitives in Europe and the head of the Kavački clan. "I'm sending the van to be somewhere else, if you're going to take yours I'll take it and sell it", writes Zvicer in his messages to Starčević, and the latter will forward all this to Mihajlović, who is waiting for instructions.
It is no wonder that Mihajlovic's group decided that the shipment would arrive in Rotterdam. That port, as well as Vlissingen, and in fact the entire Netherlands, is a popular hub and base for Balkan mafias when it comes to delivering and distributing cocaine from South America. This is where expensive white powder is distributed, a drug that has long since entered the urban middle class. Cocaine production is reaching records, according to the UN. Estimates go as far as to turn over 150 billion dollars of cocaine annually. Balkan criminal groups are making more and more money from this business, holding a good part of the European network. According to an earlier report by the Serbian Ministry of the Interior, Balkan cartels control about 60 percent of the cocaine that enters Europe through ports in Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Croatia. During 2023, Dutch investigators intercepted over 45 tons of cocaine in Rotterdam, a similar amount to the year before. The Dutch have also recently begun to pay more attention to the Balkans, such as the Kavački and Škaljarski clans. Despite hacked communications via Skye, these groups continue to make extensive use of the Netherlands to move drugs and launder money.
THEY ARE INTERESTED IN WHOLESALE
Balkan groups are "heavily involved in the wholesale cocaine trade," Jari Liuku, the police chief of Helsinki, the capital of Finland, tells us. Until May 2024, Liuku was the head of Europol's center in The Hague for the fight against major organized crime.
"This is a profitable area. If you are smuggling cocaine into the EU, at the wholesale price, I would say that it is twenty to twenty-four thousand euros per kilogram," says Liuku. In his city, Helsinki, the final price goes from 120 to 150 euros per gram.
The Balkans, he says, have been getting stronger for decades. "Now they are far more professional than they used to be. That's why I say that they are among the strongest organized criminal networks in the world at the moment."
But dirty deals are increasingly leaving a bloody trail across Europe. In the war until extermination, previously known from Latin America or movies, Kavčani and Škaljarci left over sixty dead. Sachekuš was also in Athens, Vienna, Kiev. The conflict is far from over, and the spoils are still plentiful.
The Balkan cartels hold the lion's share of imports from Brazil and Ecuador and have entire networks in the Netherlands and Belgium. "They have good contacts with local drug networks all over the world, cooperate with other organized criminal groups, share financial risks and new smuggling routes," Liuku adds.
COOPERATION WITH MOROCCAN
In the Netherlands, they have no choice but to cooperate with the "Moroccan Mafia", actually a criminal network run by Dutch citizens of Moroccan origin. They have been the main beasts in the illegal sale of cocaine and hashish since the seventies.
Their boss Riduan Taghi (46) was recently sentenced to life imprisonment in Amsterdam in the famous "Marengo" trial, for ordering five murders, attempted murder, theft and several crimes related to the possession of weapons.
The gang is connected to the murders of journalists, lawyers, as well as the establishment of the infamous torture chamber in one of the shipping containers. Although he is in prison in Vugt, one of the strictest in the Netherlands, Tagi is suspected of directing death squads from the outlaw motorcycle gang "Kaloh Wagoh" from his cell.
Now, more than four years after Mihajlović and Starčević exchanged the described messages, the matter is in the hands of the Serbian Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime, which cites those messages from Sky in the indictment against the Balkan Cartel.
"Dutch criminal groups play an important role in the European drug trade, especially in the ports of the Netherlands and Belgium," Saša Đorđević from the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime told Vreme. "It is impossible to work in places like Rotterdam without their fingers. Their services are expensive, and they are given a share of the profits.”
As he says, Balkan criminals rely on locals from the Netherlands. "But someone from the group itself oversees the whole process, and they are known for ruthless control."
What does it look like in practice? Cocaine from South America is most often hidden in shipping containers with flowers, bananas and the like. When it arrives at the port, the "replacement method" is used, as the Dutch police call it. "Cocaine extractors" enter the port and transfer the drugs from containers whose final destinations are outside the EU and are likely to be checked by customs officers - into containers with a destination in another port in the EU, which are usually not checked.
In Rotterdam and the surrounding area, young people without prospects are massively hired as "pick-ups", say the police. In just two weeks in 2022, 125 young men aged 18 to 26 were arrested for moving cocaine in the port of Rotterdam. Insiders, bribed port workers are needed for that job. And there is a great choice - almost two hundred thousand people work in the port of Rotterdam alone. Port employees who provide one-day access to a criminal collect five or ten thousand euros each time.
When the cocaine finally gets out of port, it is distributed across the continent. If the shipment does not "fall" anywhere, the profit is shared. The messages from Sky show the financial calculations in this business. "It's not very sophisticated, but you can see the calculation and the cost sheet," says Đorđević. "They determine the money for various expenses, paying the Colombians, the captain of the ship, transport, partners in Europe."
WHEN THE SKY FELL
"Police throughout Europe, especially in the Netherlands, Belgium and France, together with partners from the Balkans, were late in recognizing the danger of Balkan criminal groups", criticizes Đorđević. "Yet the decryption of Skye and further investigations have yielded an enormous amount of information - something we may never experience again."
As Đorđević says, in communication via Sky, the most used languages in the world, after English, were Albanian and Serbo-Croatian. Since 2020 and the decryption of the application, there have been more seizures of drugs moved by the Balkan cartels. Various, because there are many of them, and Europol often calls them collectively.
Thus, this European police agency states that between 2020 and 2023, 26,5 tons of cocaine smuggled by the Balkans were seized, which is four times the amount than in the previous four-year period.
The crackdown on chat programs led to the arrest of 6500 people worldwide, according to Europol. Assets worth close to one billion euros were seized, as well as about one hundred tons of cocaine and thirty million pills like ecstasy. That evidence led to several trials both in Belgrade and Podgorica, most of which are still ongoing.
In Belgrade, a former operative of the Service for Combating Organized Crime (SBPOK) Božidar Stolić was sentenced to a year and a half in prison for passing on confidential information about the Veljko Belivuk clan to Filip Golubović from Beran. Stolić allegedly took only 500 euros for that.
The former president of the Supreme Court in Montenegro, Vesna Medenica, was sentenced to six months for abuse of office. There is also another process against her, because she is accused of being part of a criminal group led by her son, organizing the transportation of cocaine and smuggled cigarettes through the port of Bar.
THERE IS NO TRACE TO THE MONEY
Another case from the Netherlands attracted the attention of the Dutch and Serbian police - the case of former criminal policeman Ljubo Milović from Kotor. His group used the company "Blumen Market" from Arandjelovac as a front, which supposedly delivers flowers and fruits. And in fact, she transported millions of sums, profits from cocaine, from the Netherlands to Belgrade. The final destination was the port of Kotor. Like Deniz Mihajlović, Milović was also in contact with the head of the Kavački clan, Radoj Zvicer. The indictment of the Serbian prosecutor's office accuses Milović and his team of having transported to Serbia more than six million euros obtained from cocaine from Ecuador. From there, the money went to Montenegro and Croatia in luxury and armored vehicles. Milović, known as Officer, allegedly led the entire scheme with Strahinja Kutlešić, known as Salvatore.
"This is a picture from the Netherlands from the warehouse where we are loading for Serbia," wrote Kutlešić in a message to Milović. The picture shows a logistics center with a number of "Scania" trucks. And then a shot of a pile of money, packed in vacuum bags.
"Every week, I have two with a hole, so I can combine them", he describes the trucks and his logistical possibilities before going on to praise the staff: "And the driver associates, very trustworthy, I always pay them so that they have an interest and just drive and keep quiet.” The two discussed how to transfer 1,5 million euros. "Plan at 18:XNUMX p.m. to bring the money to the warehouse, there will be a black Scania with BG plates," they agreed. "You take over in BG the day after tomorrow morning."
As the correspondence shows, Kutlešić did a lot of work for Milović. "I'm in Alicante, tomorrow I'm going to Madrid, then I'll go to Italy, the phone usually works, only if I'm on a plane", he writes. Kutlešić organized many deliveries from the Netherlands. Let's say, in May 2020, Milović ordered a "ride". "For one million. (…) Maybe there will be more." Kutlešić quickly answers: "Truck Wednesday afternoon or Thursday, in Alsmer, like last time", he writes. Aalsmeer is a town close to Amsterdam. "Now I'm going to look for a tour to Montenegro, but if I can't find it, then Belgrade", adds Kutlešić, a courier-logistician. There were at least fifteen similar tours, always on the same fora. At the pick-up point, the same driver would meet people arriving in luxury cars, pack the money into the "hole" in the cabin of the van and inform the boss, who would tell him exactly where to drive. If the destination is Belgrade, the "Knez Petrola" pump in Borča was used. The truck would be left there and the key in the outside water tank. Someone would take the money from the bunker in the cabin and leave 300-400 euros for the driver, who claimed at the trial that he did not know who he actually worked for, that he quit his job and continued to receive threats.
Ljubo Milović and his boss Radoje Zvicer have been on the Montenegrin wanted list since July 2022, for drug smuggling and management of a criminal group. Both are still on the run.
A warrant has not been issued for the owner of the "Blumen Market" transport company, who is also on the run, for months. According to some journalists who followed the case, he was practically let to run away.
In general, breaking Sky in Serbia led to arrests, but always only on the surface. The money trail and mass laundering were never touched. This is one of the reasons for the skepticism of Western investigators towards their Serbian colleagues.
THE NETHERLANDS IS BECOMING A NARCO-COUNTRY
The presence of global crime is increasingly spilling over into Dutch society. Some of the freshest news from the black chronicle: two boys killed in a confrontation with Kalashnikovs, a mother killed in front of her children, a human head left in front of a hookah bar in Amsterdam.
There are also classic mafia sačekuses. Lawyer Derk Wirsum, who represented Nabil B. - the crown witness against Taghi's clan - was killed in front of the house. Two killers killed in broad daylight investigative journalist Peter de Vries, who also advised Nabil B.
People are even more worried about the so-called Vergissemorden - murders by mistake - which have become almost commonplace in Amsterdam. "A man was killed right there, it was a mistake," says a scavenger in Amsterdam's New West district.
"Cuckolded people were looking for someone else, early on. They mixed up the targets. I heard a Kalashnikov, like ra-ta-taa, I thought it was fireworks. But then I saw the police and heard that the wrong person had been killed. It was supposed to be revenge for some unpaid drugs or similar", he adds. He says the underground has come to the surface and the common world is afraid. "Every now and then you hear gunshots. Then it's quiet, then it comes again, Kalashnikovs can be heard", says this cleaner, who is on the streets while the city sleeps.
In the southern part of Rotterdam, not far from the port, where the ordinary world lives in bungalows and low-rise buildings, there was a big explosion at the beginning of last year. What remained was an apartment block in ruins and black soot on the walls. In one of the apartments there was a laboratory for drug production, where cocaine was "cut" - something was added to dilute it and thus make more money. Everything exploded, three people died.
In 2023 alone, the Dutch police discovered 151 laboratories, mostly those where synthetic drugs are made or cocaine is extracted from substances in which it was hidden, such as cow hides or charcoal. It was a record year, yet probably only the tip of the iceberg.
During the first half of last year, ten people died and five were injured in several explosions in laboratories. Some of the labs are in apartments or basements in the middle of residential neighborhoods.
"It is useful for criminals to be located near the port, because drugs arrive there," says Willem Velders, who is involved in the fight against narcotics in the police.
NEW MEETING PLACE FOR BOS
After Dubai, Medellin, New York and Miami, it seems that Amsterdam and Rotterdam are becoming the meeting points of the global drug trade, according to the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime. In the bars and hotels of the two Dutch metropolises, supply and demand are weighed, negotiated and huge sums are paid for goods.
A large financial sector and a profitable real estate market leave room for criminals to launder dirty money. Amsterdam is considered to be the center of the European branch of hawala - an informal money transfer that transfers about ten billion euros annually, without any written traces.
In the southernmost Dutch city of Maastricht, we talk to Mark Schmitz, an adviser who helps the government's body fight organized crime. Schmitz is worried. The province of Limburg, in which Maastricht is located, was also badly affected.
"Limburg is attractive (to foreign criminals) because we are next to the border, well connected in terms of infrastructure and finances. Here the traffic arteries are knocking. Another right applies across the border. We're basically planting a bucket here to catch the storm's rainfall.” Šmitz deals with another problem. Camp-parks in this part of the country, dotted along the border with Belgium and Germany, are increasingly a haven for criminals. It is believed that the mafia hides drugs and money there, as well as that their drivers and couriers stay there.
A former Dutch police spokesman told "Vremen" reporters that groups from Serbia linked to the Škaljarski or Kavački clan also operate from such parks, where there are log cabins or places for caravans.
Haunted Houses
"Serbs who collect money from the port rent houses there, and drivers go there between jobs. They temporarily keep drugs and cash there," says our source. "It's like a safe house. From there, drugs are transported to Serbia, Montenegro, Spain and the Netherlands."
He claims that the two Kotor clans have cells all over the Netherlands. "They are very active and aggressive. "They are not only involved in extracting cocaine from ports like Rotterdam and further transport around Europe, but they also rent houses and warehouses," he says. Allegedly, Balkan clans rent houses in camping parks legally, and then rent them out to other criminals as safe places, to do what they have to do and disappear. This former police officer adds that "Serbs are aggressively buying real estate in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. They buy construction companies, invest in restaurants, cafes, and other businesses. I know of a manicure salon where you don't see a single customer, but the revenue is supposedly in the millions. Pure steam washing.”
All this information is difficult to verify. The police of the Netherlands and Belgium, who have arrested people connected to the Kavački and Skaljar clans several times in previous years, do not want to talk about this topic. Europol officially told us that "at the moment they don't have anyone who can speak" about this. The Serbian MUP ignored "Vremen"'s inquiries.
Dutch criminologist Cyril Fijnauth says that the story about the Balkans' rule of the camping parks sounds logical to him: "For people from the Balkans, as well as for the Italian mafia, Limburg is a nice place, so to speak, because they are close to the border of Belgium and Germany. Many people from the Balkans live in Germany. North Limburg is right next to the Ruhr area.”
Fijnaut says that it is not strange that Serbian criminals take root in the developed west of Europe, which offers them much more certainty than "some banana republic".
The source of Vremena, a former police spokesman, believes that the Dutch authorities still do not take the matter seriously. He says that the Balkan mafia is far more disciplined than the Moroccan one. And he claims that the Serbian police refuse to fully cooperate in the investigations.
"Our police are afraid to share information with them because it immediately leaks to the criminals," says this source and adds: "It's getting more and more serious. We don't know how to deal with it."
This text was created with support
Journalism Fund Europe.
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