Over two decades after high-ranking Montenegrin security officers Goran Zugic and Darko Raspopovic were shot dead, the killings remain unsolved but suspicions persist of links to police-protected cigarette-smuggling cartels......
Thirty-seven-year-old Zugic began his career as a police officer in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina, but his family fled to Montenegro when the war started there. In 1992, Zugic became head of the police in the coastal town of Herceg Novi, but in 1995, he was promoted to head of the force in Podgorica.
It was a politically turbulent time in Montenegro, which at the time was still part of Yugoslavia, where the wars in Croatia and Bosnia had just ended. There was a power struggle between then Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic and President Momir Bulatovic.
Zugic supported Djukanovic, who eventually came out on top. After Djukanovic was elected president in 1998, Zugic was appointed as his adviser for national security.
More than two decades after he was killed, Montenegrin police and the Special State Prosecution told BIRN there has been no progress in the murder investigation.
“The prosecution has continuously undertaken the necessary investigative activities, and through international legal assistance, several countries were required to collect notifications and certain data about the criminal act. But so far this has not resulted in the discovery of the perpetrator,” the Special State Prosecutor’s office said.
Killed on a crowded street
Less than a year after Zugic’s murder, another high-ranking security operative was murdered in Podgorica. On January 8, 2001, Montenegrin Security Service officer Darko ‘Beli’ Raspopovic was killed next to his car on a main street crowded with passers-by.
According to police reports, a man in a baseball cap came from behind and fired seven shots into Rapopovic using a pistol with a silencer and then vanished into a nearby dark passage.
Two days later, the then head of the National Security Service, Dusko Markovic, said that Raspopovic was known as professional who was dedicated to the state’s interests.
“Raspopovic fell victim to an evil period, but we will do everything to find those who committed this crime. These people will feel the power of the state which they tried to undermine by Raspopovic’s murder,” Markovic said at his funeral.
Raspopovic was part of a National Security Service special unit and was known as a capable officer. In 1997, during the UN embargo on what was then Yugoslavia, Italian police arrested him and seven other security service officers after they tried to smuggle a tanker ship full of oil to Montenegro. Media reported that the security officers were released after the intervention of the Montenegrin authorities.
During violent opposition demonstrations in Podgorica on January 1997, Raspopovic and his unit prevented protesters from entering the government building. He also seemed to have enemies – three years before he was shot dead, his car was blown up by a bomb in January 1998. The perpetrators were never found.
The Police Directorate and the Special State Prosecution told BIRN that the Raspopovic case is still in the investigation phase. The police have made a photofit picture of the suspected killer and questioned potential witnesses. The investigative judge in the case, Musika Dujovic, didn’t respond to BIRN’s request for an interview.
In January 2017, the former head of criminal police Milisav Sekulovic told Vijesti television station that police investigated potential links between the Raspopovic murder and high-ranking criminals in Montenegro.
“Despite our official requests to neighbour Serbia [for information], there was no official notification from their police. The only thing we could do was to communicate with our private contacts and people from the criminal world. But we didn’t find anything,” Sekulovic said.
Zoran Radulovic, a Montenegrin journalist who covered the Zugic and Raspopovic cases, said that police and prosecution didn’t do their best to solve the killings.
“Speculation about those crimes continues even two decades later. There were rumours about [the victims’] participation in or possession of information about criminal affairs. As far as I remember, the authorities didn’t even offer us any clues about the motives of the organisers of the crimes,” Radulovic told BIRN.
Tobacco-smuggling connections
In May 2001, Zugic and Raspopovic’s names appeared in a series of articles on cigarette-smuggling through Montenegro published by Croatian weekly Nacional.
One of the smugglers, Srecko Kestner, told Nacional that Zugic provided a secure escort for trucks full of contraband cigarettes from Montenegro to Serbia.
“He also gave me a police escort when some local criminals tried to extort me – 11 policemen from the Podgorica police intervention unit were with me at all times,” Kestner said.
“For his services and involvement in smuggling, Zugic was getting paid 100,000 Deutschmarks per month,” he claimed.
After the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the Montenegrin port of Bar became a known hub for cigarette-smuggling, where imported tobacco was re-exported and from where cigarettes made in Montenegro were shipped out.
Zugic’s name was also mentioned during the trial of four Montenegrin citizens – three businessmen, Vesko Barovic, Branko Vujosevic and Branislav Micunovic, and the former chief of Montenegro’s trade mission in Italy, Dusanka Jeknic – for tobacco-smuggling in Bari in Italy.
In December 2014, media published a statement to Italian prosecutors from 2002 made by the then head of the Montenegrin Agency for Foreign Investments, Goran Stanjevic. Stanjevic he claimed that Zugic was killed soon after he received documents about the tobacco-smuggling investigation into the four Montenegrins.
Stanjevic said that the head of a tobacco-smuggling group from Naples, Ciro Mazzarella, ordered him to give the documents to the Montenegrin authorities and warn them about the investigation.
“I copied the documents and took them to Zugic. I don’t know what they did with it, but I know that Zugic was killed after a few months,” Stanjevic said.
A former member of the Montenegrin parliamentary defence and security committee, Predrag Bulatovic, told BIRN that the government and police were both involved in cigarette-smuggling during the 1990s.
“The National Security Service was key link in the illegal business and Zugic and Raspopovic were some of Djukanovic’s most trusted men. Their murders are related to the government’s and Security Service’s illegal business and it’s the key reason why there was no progress in the investigation [into the two men’s murders],” Bulatovic said.
In July 2009 the former head of the Montenegrin trade mission in Washington DC, Ratko Knezevic, told Vijesti newspaper that Raspopovic had disagreements with Zugic and one of the main smugglers, Blagota ‘Baja’ Sekulovic, about his share in the smuggling profits. Knezevic also claimed that Raspopovic’s team from the Security Service protected trucks carrying contraband cigarettes.
“Raspopovic and his crew no longer partook in the profits and were not favoured by the bosses, so he decided to murder Zugic and Sekulic. He succeeded in killing Zugic, but then Sekulic was faster,” Knezevic said in an open letter that he sent to media.
Blagota Sekulic was killed in the coastal resort of Budva in May 2001. As with the other murders, police never found the killers. Knezevic was a witness in the tobacco-smuggling trial in Bari in April 2002, but he was never questioned by Montenegrin prosecution about the murders.
In January 2019, a court in Bari dropped the charges against the three Montenegrin businessmen and the former chief of Montenegro’s trade mission in Italy for involvement in the mafia-run cigarette-smuggling racket across the Adriatic Sea between 1994 and 2002.
Charges had already been dropped in 2009 against Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, who was also investigated in Italy in the same cigarette-smuggling case.
Security service urged to help
There was a hint in December 2022. that progress in the murder cases could be possible when the new Supreme State Prosecutor, Vladimir Novovic, said that old investigations could be reopened, although he stressed that it could be hard to get new evidence due to the passage of time.
In an interview with Vijesti TV, Novovic said that the prosecution needs to cooperate more productively with the National Security Agency, and urged the agency it to provide intelligence data that could be useful for cases.
Novovic was appointed in March 2022, after the new ruling majority of three former opposition blocs ousted Milo Djukanovic’s long-ruling Democratic Party of Socialists from office in 2020.
But although the prosecution has since launched investigations into former high-ranking judicial officials for abuse of office and corruption, former MP Bulatovic said that the fight against organised crime has just started.
“The new special state prosecutor had certain results, but there are also delays and obstructions. It’s hard to deal with more recent cases and there is nothing at all about previous ones,” Bulatovic said.
Journalist Zoran Radulovic pointed out however that there is little chance of progress as more than two decades have passed since the security officers’ murders.
“The passage of time reduces the chances that these murders will be solved by the regular procedures,” Radulovic said.
“Eventually, a cooperating witness may appear, but even in that instance it would be a big question as to whether there is any material evidence that would support his story to the extent that it would be acceptable for a court case.”
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