Serbian mafia
Serbian gangsters in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and France carried out robberies and heists with the support of the Yugoslavian security services, which employed expatriate criminals as informants and assassins, and in exchange provided them with weapons and legal protection.
[12] The Serbian mafia gave many Serbs a perceived way out of the economic disaster that occurred in the country following the implementation of internationally imposed sanctions against Serbia during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.
Serbian criminals have also been recruited into state security forces, a notable example being Milorad "Legija" Ulemek, a commander in Arkan's Tigers, which was re-labelled as the JSO (Red Berets) after the war.
[14][15][16][17][18][19] the Serbian mafia is composed of several major international criminal organizations specializing in the cocaine trade, which in turn have wider networks throughout Europe and across the world.
[23][24] In June 2013, Forbes magazine published a list of the richest mafia bosses in the world, with Serbian drug lord Darko Šarić in fifth place with an estimated 27 billion dollars worth of assets.
He was later accused of organizing the 2008 assassination of Ivo Pukanić, a Croatian journalist killed by a car bomb, but was acquitted by a Serbian court due to a lack of evidence for his involvement.
[52] Police seized 2.8 tons (2,800 kg, worth 120 million €[53]) of cocaine shipment from Uruguay on 17 October 2009, the BIA and American DEA made the joint operation.
[56] The Interior Ministry organized the Morava-operation that would focus on drug trafficking to young people in the primary and secondary schools, clubs and cafes and would encompass 2,000 police officers searching the whole country.
[55] The busts were part of the Operation Balkan Warrior; an international drug smuggling case that involves mainly the Zemun clan, led by, among others, Željko Vujanović.
[64] On 19 February 2010, Interior Minister Dačić said more than 50 suspects were arrested today in an ongoing operation aimed against financial crime and money laundering conducted in Valjevo, Novi Sad, Belgrade, Šabac, Sremska Mitrovica, Čačak and Sombor.
[65] In March 2010, Stanko "Cane" Subotić, head of the so-called "Tobacco mafia", accused Nebojša Medojević, the Montenegrin party leader of Movement for Change of having organized a manhunt for him.
"The latest property seizures prove that those groups have laundered narco money by investing not only into their personal houses and land but also in tourism, factories and distribution of the press", Tadić said.
Group America has roots in New York and Belgrade,operating on globale scale in dozen of Countries, this criminal organization is considered to be the most pervasive, violent and powerful drug crime in Europe.
Its ability to stay in the shadows, while maintaining vast control over the global drug trade, logistics, and political systems, makes it a unique entity in organized crime.
[82] The group originated in the 1970s, when Serbian nationalist Boško "The Yugo" Radonjić emigrated from Yugoslavia to the United States and joined the Westies, a predominantly Irish-American organized crime gang operating in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan in New York.
After the imprisonment of Jimmy Coonan and other Westies leaders in the late 1980s, Radonjić assumed control of the gang and recruited other Serb mobsters, including Mileta Miljanić and Zoran Jakšić, into the organization.
[83] Miljanić, a Bosnian Serb from Gacko, and Jakšić, an immigrant from Zrenjanin, served as bodyguards for Radonjić before they were each sentenced to federal prison for credit card fraud in the late 1980s.
[84] Amidst the breakup of Yugoslavia and outbreak of the Yugoslav Wars in the early 1990s, Radonjić and other gang members returned to Belgrade, where they allegedly established links with the Serbian security services.
[87] [88] YACS (an abbreviation of "Yugoslavians, Albanians, Croatians and Serbians") is a term used by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to describe a loose-knit network of criminals from the former Yugoslavia based in the Bronx and southern Westchester County areas of New York.
[91] As part of a Labor Day initiative by the FBI, YACS burglars and robbers were arrested in Branford, Connecticut; Montgomery Township, Pennsylvania; North Reading, Massachusetts; and Los Gatos, California, in September 1995.
[91] Thirteen alleged members of the YACS network were indicted in Manhattan Federal Court on 25 April 1996, on charges of conspiracy to commit interstate theft, robbery and bank burglary.
[97] On 30 May 1996, ten people allegedly affiliated with the YACS group were indicted in White Plains Federal Court, charged with robbery, burglary, narcotics distribution and racketeering.
[93][98] Two suspected members of the YACS gang, Sasa Vucetovic and Gary Bohanan, were arrested following a $36,000 armed robbery of a Chase Manhattan Bank in Ardsley, New York on 23 June 1998.
[99] On 14 August 1998, three suspected YACS members, Shani Gashi, Michael Ruiz and John DeAngelo, were arrested in Yorktown while opening a safe which had been stolen from a convenience store in Hunter, New York.
[citation needed] Interpol believes that the YACS Crime Group that evolved into The PINK PANTHERS are responsible for US$130 million in bold robberies in Dubai, Switzerland, Japan, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and Monaco.
[119] In 1990, Kosovo Albanian activist Enver Hadri was assassinated in Brussels by Veselin "Vesko" Vukotić, Andrija Lakonić, and Darko Ašanin, at the time hired by the UDBA (Yugoslav intelligence).
[45] Sreten Jocić (aka "Joca Amsterdam") escaped from custody in Netherlands in 1993; he left for Bulgaria where he would continue his drug smuggling under the pseudonym "Marko Milosavljević" (which happens to be the same name as a noted Serbian football player).
[123] Croatian hitman Robert Matanić and his colleagues were hired by the Zemun clan to kill members of the competing Bulgarian mafia for the Balkan drug route.
Đorđe Božović, Vlasto Petrović Crnogorac, and Darko Ašanin were connected with mafiosi operating from Montenegro; Branko and Slobodan Šaranović, Brano Mićunović and Ratko "Cobra" Đokić, Sarajevo; Miša Martinović, Zagreb; Marko Vlahović.
In Italy he became a leading heroin distributor and professional hitman, working for the Camorra in Naples, he is recognized as highly skilled as many of his fellow Zemun clan members are known throughout Europe.
