New York Times, article on President Vučić's suspected ties to organized crime

2023-05-07 18:13:55, Kosova & Bota CNA

New York Times, article on President Vu?i?'s suspected ties to organized

The weekly magazine of the New York Times newspaper has today published a long article, where it reveals the alleged connections of the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vucic, with the world of crime in Serbia. The article details crimes committed by a criminal group whose leader says it served the power of President Vu?i?. Colleague Artan Haraqija talked with the author of the article, journalist Robert F. Worth and the American professor, early connoisseur of developments in the Balkans, Daniel Serwer, who say that President Vucic has put all the levers of power in Serbia under control.

A long article , originally published on the website of the New York Times newspaper, raises numerous accusations about the connections of the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vucic, with the world of organized crime. The article by journalist Robert F. Worth describes in detail the crimes committed by the gang of Veljko Belivuk, the head of the fan group of the football team Partizan Belgrade. He and 29 members of the group were arrested in 2021.

"In a closed court hearing, Veljko Belivuk said that his gang was organized 'for the needs and at the behest of Aleksandar Vucic,' according to court transcripts," the New York Times article states .

" He described some of the work that the gang claimed to have done for the government, such as intimidating political rivals" and that he had personally met with President Vucic. These allegations have been denied by the Serbian president, who however refused to comment on the allegations to the New York Times.

Journalist Worth says that he does not believe that Mr. Vu?i? created the Serbian nationalist criminal gangs, but he definitely used them to strengthen his power.

"Serbian nationalism fueled the war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. So it has been around for a long time and the same can be said for organized crime. I think he is an opportunistic politician who really wants to be in power. He has been very effective in controlling almost all the levers of power in Serbia, and for this he has used all the opportunities in the country", says New York Times journalist Robert F. Worth for the Voice of America.

John Hopkins University professor and early observer of developments in the Balkans, Daniel Sewer, shares the same opinion.

"There is no politician who, under the current circumstances, can rise to power in Belgrade without some kind of adaptation to organized crime and its Secret Service. This is quite clear. The question is whether Vucic is part of the problem, or part of the solution. And overall, I'm convinced he's part of the problem because of the way he behaves. He has restored autocracy in Serbia and has tolerated not only football gangs, but also organized crime," John Hopkins University professor Daniel Serwer tells VOA.

New York Times, article on President Vu?i?'s suspected ties to organized

Veljko Belivuk's group had been arrested before, but in all cases had managed to avoid punishment due to the links that until 2021 were suspected to exist between it and the Serbian state.

"The support that Belivuk and his friends received from the police and the interior ministry over the past decade has been documented in court testimony, wiretaps and photographs. The suggestion that all of this could have happened without Vucic's knowledge causes laughter in Belgrade," the New York Times said.

Officially, Veljko Belivuk's group is accused of various crimes, including some monstrous crimes such as cutting off the limbs of victims, mostly members of rival criminal groups. After the slaughter, the parts of the mutilated bodies, as the New York Times article reports, are thrown into a meat grinder.

The Ministry of the Interior of Serbia has published this video on the "YouTube" platform, where it says that in addition to the weapons and explosives of the Belivuk group, during the raids, it also found the meat machine with the DNA of the victims who were allegedly massacred.

While Mr. Vucic, according to the New York Times article, exercises control over almost every aspect of public life, the arrest of Belivuk's group may be one of the few decisions that the Serbian president could not control.

The evidence in this case came from a Belgian EUROPOL team who, after two years of trying, succeeded in deciphering the Sky - ECC messaging app, a preferred means of communication for cocaine traffickers in Europe. There, all the information about Veljko Belivuk's group was revealed, something that the authorities in Serbia can no longer avoid. The American journalist says that he expects that the EUROPOL investigation, which is still ongoing, will reveal criminal links between different ethnic groups in the Balkans.

" This European investigation led by Europol really exposed these criminal networks in a way that had never been done before. They are still investigating the messages they deciphered. So I think there are many more that haven't been reported yet. One thing worth noting is that these criminal shenanigans often transcend politics. People may be on different ethnic sides, but when it comes to money, they will cooperate. I think we will discover more over time about how these criminal networks work ," says journalist Worth.

His article says that so far most of the data from the Balkans has been about the Serbian group.

The New York Times article several times also mentions the danger that the Serbian president could instigate a war with the aim of creating a Serbian World, the nationalist idea of ??controlling all territories where Serbs live. This also means sending the army for the annexation of the north of Kosovo.

New York Times, article on President Vu?i?'s suspected ties to organized

According to the New York Times, this concern keeps European diplomats up at night. However, Europeans, along with American officials, according to analyst Daniel Serwer, continue to offer unwavering support to the Serbian government and autocrats in the Balkans in general.

Western officials are deceiving themselves and they are doing it for a purpose. They have given up on liberal democracy in Serbia, in Kosovo, in Bosnia, in general in the Balkans. And what they're doing is trying to use the nationalists to keep the peace, basically, to stabilize the region. This is an idea that has always existed in the West, but it has become very prominent in the administration of President Biden, and it leans very much towards being positive for Belgrade, no matter what happens," says John University professor for VOA. Hopkins, Daniel Server.

American journalist Robert F. Worth says that there are Serbs who think that the situation in general is even worse than under Slobodan Milosevic.

" Some Serbs have told me that in some ways the situation is worse than it was during Milosevic's time. Justice is more politicized than it was back then. There is no more bloody civil war and that is a good thing, but Serbia is now a country where the police, at various levels and at various times, have been involved in criminal activities," says Mr. Worth .

The journalist says that he was never detained while he was in Serbia, although he does not rule out the possibility that he was intercepted without realizing it.

" I didn't mention this in the article, but I had a meeting with a former senior Serbian police official, who wanted to give me some information, but was very afraid of the consequences. We met in a cafeteria and within a few minutes he said that we are being watched and we are not safe. I tried to contact him again and offer him the security to talk, to tell me what he had to say, but he decided not to talk anymore."

The same feeling of being eavesdropped, the journalist says, was also experienced by former president Boris Tadi? who, in a meeting with him, approached him and whispered "some friends of Belivuk may be sitting next to us"./ VOA